Hispanic Mobile Marketing

The ad:tech Miami panel on mobile marketing for Hispanic cultures in North America kicked off with a tasty amuse bouche of Universal Truths About Mobile, courtesy Jose Villa, CEO of digital ad shop Sensis:

1. Mobile and SMS texting are part of life.
2. Mobile marketing must be permission-based.
3. Mobile is not the Internet, but the user experience is improving.
4. Mobile marketing programs should be tested and optimized starting now.
5. Mobile initiatives must be integrated with other media campaigns.
6. Mobile campaigns, at least right now, need to be simple.

Some may suggest the above statements are, in the spirit of Hooters' tagline, painfully obvious yet delightfully apparent.

Still, that's what universal truths need to be, no? What goes up must come down and all that. And once the above statements are taken as obvious and apparent facts of multichannel marketing, then we can all start getting somewhere, mobile-ly speaking.

Perhaps it makes sense that these truths come from the Hispanic mobile marketing community. As moderator Michael Bayle noted at the outset, the majority of Hispanic Americans, when polled on what devices or technologies they'd have a difficult time relinquishing, said they couldn't or wouldn't give up their mobile devices.

And, according to several panelists, not only do Hispanics in North America spend more money on better devices than their non-Hispanic counterparts; they spend more money on mobile downloads, as well, and are more receptive to mobile advertising.

Still, with all these factors in place, the session showed that marketers still struggle to get ROI from mobile media.

The answer to this persistent question?

Test, test, test.

For example, the Army and Sensis tested a mobile campaign targeting Hispanics in San Antonio. They spent a relatively small amount to buy OOH media at bus stops, radio spots, and short codes for text message responses.

They got sixteen responses from the campaign. One-six. You read that right.

So, they figured the numeric short codes weren't as memorable as a branded keyword could've been and the call to action wasn't prominent enough to grab consumers' attention. On to test two.

Still, according to Jeff Hasen, Chief Marketing Officer at HipCricket, around 80% of consumers who respond to a shortcode campaign end up taking financial action. Hasen called mobile a one-to-one, open-ended dialogue with consumers and said that, considering technology's current state, SMS is the best channel for reaching users. Still, he noted, ROI and measurability are top-of-mind for advertisers. How much should they spend, and what results should they expect?

It's a loaded question that is, indeed, on everyone's mind. Larry Upton, founder and CEO of Edioma, Inc., said that he's found the key to successful campaigns and happy advertisers lies in the accumulation of eyeballs.

He reminded the audience that relatively few U.S. Hispanics have proprietary Internet access; for these consumers, mobile IS their key to unlocking the Internet.

So, his company develops culturally relevant games built around teaching to functional needs such as language, banking, and healthcare. Although some of those needs were unanticipated (who would have thought that 70% of Tejanos needed to learn Spanish because they grew up in English-only households?), ad sponsorships have followed as downloads have risen.

The key now is to work with advertisers to find more and better ways to create and deliver branded content.