SQUEEZING MONEY FROM MARKETERS

NEW YORK-Companies looking to cash in on wireless should focus less on whiz-bang technology and worry more about reach, according to the keynote speakers at the final day of the Mobile Marketing Forum’s conference here.
“Gold is audience,” said John Hadl, CEO of Brand in Hand. “Marketers don’t buy tools, they want gold. For many of you, the challenge is how do you convert tools into audience? That is how you’re going to get money out of marketers.”
Brand in Hand serves as a kind of liaison between major brand marketers and a handful of mobile companies. Hadl, who also acts as the strategic advisor to Procter & Gamble’s mobile marketing group, said companies in the wireless industry need to understand that mainstream advertisers aren’t necessarily interested in eye-popping applications. Instead, they want to reach as many people as possible, and they want to be able to measure the efficacy of their marketing campaigns.
So mobile companies not only need to help deploy wireless marketing campaigns, they need to establish ways to target users and compile marketing data, said Eric Bader, senior VP of MediaVest, a marketing firm. And, he said, they need to work hand-in-hand with their non-wireless partners to leverage that information.
“Frankly, this is an area where we all need to tighten up; we need to invest in it,” Bader said. “We need to start making meaningful decisions based on the data.”