Mobile Marketing Technology: Insights from Chief Research Officer of G2 Crowd based on 18.6 million data points

by Daniel Burstein, Senior Director, Content & Marketing, MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute

Fauscette’s insights are based on nearly 600,000 reviews and 18.6 million data points. He says these reviews are more akin to in-depth surveys than simple Yelp reviews. And he describes G2 as a website where “buyers can come in and do research and help figure out how to solve their business problems with technology.”

Here are a few highlights from our conversation, with timestamps if you want to skip around …

You need a comprehensive, end-to-end plan

Software isn’t magic. You can’t just buy software and expect to get phenomenal mobile marketing results.

“There are some great mobile marketing platforms that help you with parts. But underneath that, you really do have to have a plan that says … how do I tie all these pieces together so that I know you, Dan, you in a loyalty program, versus you on Facebook, versus you in my store? And how do I put that whole picture together so that I can actually do this in real time and offer you something or come back to you with some sort of value that you want to react to?” Fauscette said. (3:42)

That software needs to play well together

The customer journey is complex, and the technological infrastructure to track and serve the customer can be equally difficult. Fauscette mentioned the $6.5 billion acquisition by SalesForce of MuleSoft, an integration platform for connecting SaaS and enterprise applications, as an example of where the market is headed to address these challenges. 

“The fact that you have 33 solutions in your MarTech stack today, that's a problem, because likely 32 of them don't talk to each other.” (5:12)

Customers expect value for their data

Data privacy is a sensitive subject of late, with new GDRP regulations in Europe, and Facebook under so much heat that Mark Zuckerberg was dragged in front of Congress (and had to explain to Senator Orrin Hatch how Facebook makes money even though it’s free — pregnant pause … "Senator, we run ads.” … smirk)

One way to overcome customer anxieties is to use that data in a customer-first manner.

“I’m willing to give you data if I get that sort of value back. If I walk into the store and you're offering me 20% off on the thing that I was thinking about, I might wonder how you knew that. But in the end, I'm getting value out of that, so I'm happy in the relationship as long as you didn't sell my data,” Fauscette said. (8:40)

With the right data and technology in place, mobile can be a creative playground

While our conversation skewed toward technology and data, let’s not overlook the unique power the right mobile tech and metrics have for informing and powering creative experiences.

Fauscette mentioned Niantic’s Pokémon Go augmented reality mobile game as an exemplar of mobile’s unique immersive capabilities that marketers can leverage.

“I can augment your experience so that you go into a store, it knows you, you can interact with me and I can interact with the store in a way that is creative and interesting to me and helps me understand some features of a gadget I want to buy, or it helps me understand how I might look in this outfit,” he said. (10:19)

Choosing the right technology to help power your brand’s mobile marketing

Picking the right technology to underpin your mobile marketing is a difficult and crucial step that powers everything else you do. In any vendor selection situation, a common mistake is to ask about the overall best software and service.

Instead, try to understand the best solution for your specific business/situation/objectives. To that end, Fauscette suggests you learn from your peers.

“Get real data from people who use the solution for the thing you want. People like you. People in the same sort of business as you. Marketers that are in a similar industry that are solving this same problem. And find out what they did to solve their problem. What's their stack? What tools are they using?” (12:45)

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