ChaCha. Ask Away.

Who? What? Where?
Last week, Mickey Alam Khan from Mobile Marketer organized a mobile advertising event for the Direct Marketing Association in NYC. I was invited to sit on a panel with other execs from Crisp Wireless, AdMob, Bango and Jumptap. Our panel discussion centered on how mobile can be used as a channel to drive real engagement. The room was packed with direct marketers from Fortune 500 companies as well as midsized companies. The questions were very, very good. Everyone there wanted to learn more and asked questions like, “How can I actually get someone to buy something?” “How can I measure success?” “What really drives engagement?”

I’ll talk more about how to measure success and drive people to purchase via mobile in an upcoming blog entry—but for now, lets focus on how to truly engage a user through relevant advertising.

Everyone Agrees: Relevance is the key
After much discussion, everyone agreed that relevance was the true key to driving engagement and ultimately results. And what really works online—and we are all very familiar with how effective search advertising/marketing can be—works on mobile as well.  Someone is searching for an answer, the answer is delivered along with a very relevant, short, text-based ad. This is something that a mobile search provider like ChaCha can do and does now with select clients:

Case Study: H&R Block
As an example, H&R Block is currently running an advertising campaign with us on all of our tax related questions. So, when someone has a specific question about taxes, H&R can “pull” the user into the brand experience, rather than “pushing” unwanted messaging out at the wrong moment or time.

How YOU can make it work
There are many, many opportunities to drive engagement through mobile advertising. Conversational search advertising is one channel, mobile banner advertising is another, and there are many opportunities to make traditional media more active through mobile integration. The key is in selecting the right channel and the right type of mobile engagement for your brand.  As more and more brands start to integrate mobile into their everyday media mix, we’ll start to see mobile being used more and more effectively to drive true engagement and results. Since the opportunities are so vast, I predict that 2009 will be the year where smart brands move away from the “test” phase and into tried and true solutions.