It’s the brand, stupid

It’s an oft asked question round the board tables of mobile startups.

There is clearly a demand for a particular mobile product – say, Instant Messenger. Every piece of research we do points at kids screaming out for it. So why are so many IM products struggling to get numbers?

In fact, why is it that just about all mobile products fail to make the mass market? Or at most they crack the geeksphere of early adopters, and then fizzle?

Firstly,is that even true? There are some mobile products that are doing well – Flirtomatic for example.

However, ask a non nerd (and if you are reading this, then I’m afraid you don’t qualify) about mobile products, and they struggle to even grasp what you mean by a “mobile product”.

A mobile website they understand. Games they understand. But the idea that all you have to do is shove up a mobile banner a few times, and a proportion of those that see it will become happy customers of your
location based arse-scratching product is frankly tosh. Yes people will click, but with CPA rates in single figures, it’s clearly not working as it should.

But why? Is it user experience? Well, yes, but it’s more fundamental than that.

Think about the customer, and how they are first made aware of your product. Mobile banners mean people have little time to work out what the product is before they are forced to engage, which leads them to have to make really quick value judgements.

If someone clicks on that banner, they  are leaping into the abyss. The banners as stand-alone adverts for a product are small spaces to get across a lot of info. Users often get a totally inaccurate idea of what the product is. Then the user experience when they are clicked on is usually based on an internally facing and confused product offering. Is it any wonder that so few people sign up and use these things?

I’m going to quote the Chairman here, back when he was just plain old Russell Buckley.

A long time ago he said “The first task of a marketeer is to put a product in danger of being used.”

Now I take this to mean two things.

Firstly that you make a customer aware of the product’s existence, and how they can buy it.

Secondly that you make them aware of where is sits in your lifestyle, and so WHY you should buy it.

Mobile advertising does the first OK, but the second requires backup.

..and hence we get back round to Brand.

A brand, contrary to the opinions of so many startup board’s is not just a colour and a font. A brand, for them, is the way the customer feels when they encounter the product, or messaging around the product. For a good brand, it makes them feel a certain way without even knowing what the product is.

All the products that appear to have grown effortlessly spend an absolute MINT on brand development. They channel it through awareness, placement, association and values, as well as straight sales. They make sure that before you have the product in your hand, you actually want it. That way, not only will the initial cost of acquisition be lower, but also the consumer will forgive the product a few foibles. In the car world, Alfa Romeo would have gone out of business years ago if it wasn’t for their brand. Most mobile products aren’t even that good.

So, when you put up a banner that links to your mobile internet site, it is the SITE, not the BANNER that the people interpret as the brand. It is THEIR perception of the product, not YOURS, which they take away.

And THIS is why so many companies fail, or have to spend heavily to drive usage. Because if you are just sales driven, the user doesn’t engage with the brand in any sense, and so either forgets the product, or is actively dissuaded from coming back.

When put like this, it seems obvious, but there are precious few who can make the leap, when they are looking at their P&L, and considering how to drive sales.

So how do you build this brand? Especially when budgets are tight? Well, it takes a little leap. It means investing in marketing that is not immediately measurable. It means taking a good hard look at your product, and thinking “What exactly IS it?” It means taking hard decisions about what people actually use your product for, rather than what you want them to use it for.

It means building a brand.