Creating Return on Investment for Mobile Marketing - Measuring Mobile Media's ROI

Steve Smith has a great post up at Mobile Insider about how to measure mobile in a way that justifies ad spend.

In his post, he wonders what role mobile plays in an integrated campaign and asks:

From a brand or campaign manager's perspective, what is mobile supposed to do? What role does it play? And how does it compare to the other rows in the campaign's spreadsheet?

Smith references iomobile's Three Screen Trial (supported by the Mobile Marketing Association), which aims to measure effects of an interaction between mobile, Web, and television campaigns, including branding factors (awareness, engagement) and sales.

There is little doubt that once the kind of early-adopting, wired, engaged consumers who are targeted by mobile marketing actually receive the message on their wireless devices, they've also probably been exposed to the brand through other media. Surely, the effects of branding efforts in traditional media 'piggyback' around the integrated campaign. But what is the return on investment, channel by channel?

As you all (probably) know, I work at a direct response agency. It's a segment of the industry where ROI is most often measured by sales and almost never by engagement or brand awareness. So a user spends eight minutes on your website. Did he buy anything? No? Then so what?

See, I think mobile could be a perfect channel for direct response, especially in terms of measuring an ROI that lives purely in sales. I firmly believe that one of the best uses of mobile is as a sales channel for a fully cross-platform campaign. I moreover believe that consumers (especially Millennials and Gen Xers) are dying to move money through mobile devices, and there are not nearly enough opportunities to do so. I believe the biggest obstacle to conversion is convenience of purchase at the time the marketing message is received, anytime, anywhere, while the brand or product is still top-of-mind. And what else is mobile good for, if not for instant access and gratification?

So, how to make mobile an ROI-obsessed DR marketer's dream sales channel? Make mobile stores, text-to-buy programs, and paperless coupons a priority and test the hell out of them with unique offers and calls to action that are not available through other sales channels. Put the mobile offers on every other channel (in-game offers to 'click for mobile coupon', OOH and print barcodes, etc.) and find out where the response is coming from. And capitalize on mobile search in a way that allows easier conversion. Don't just show a listing for your restaurant; let the user automatically make a reservation through SMS. Et cetera, et cetera.

Another thought I had chatting with one of our account folks is using mobile as a mutlicultural add-on to a general or hegemonous campaign. We were speaking specifically about Hispanic marketing; but think about the possibilities to use the 'piggybacked' branding benefits from a major traditional campaign that has established awareness and trust, then creating a mobile campaign aimed at a particular segment. The factors available for measurement skyrocket: not only can you measure the impact of your mobile initiative itself; you can also begin to measure the impact of your brand across various cultures.