Required Reading: Location-based + Mobile Coupons = all the rage

There is a lot happening this month.  The mobile space continues to evolve at a furious pace and even more attention is being given to the opportunity to provide content and services to people on their mobile device, based on their physical location.

We thought we would share a few stories and posts that have caught our eye over the past few weeks and lead us to believe that Clip is a great business to be in right now.

• Google Adopts a “Mobile First” Strategy – in his first ever keynote at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google CEO Erich Schmidt explained that with this rule, Google developers are now creating versions of new services for smartphones before creating ones to run on PCs.
• AdAge posted an interesting overview of how mobile is changing the way consumers shop and looks at several of the leading mobile tools available.  This leading industry blog is giving way more attention to mobile reflecting a great awareness and interest amongst digital marketers about the potential of mobile marketing.
• It’s all about location, location, location.   At this years SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas location-based services are stealing the show. Industry heavy hitters Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare all made major announcements and unveiled their plans to further integrate location into their services leading up to the festival.  Some smaller players are doing cool stuff with location too. vicarious.ly as well as product called fourwhere (by Canada’s own Sysomos!) both location-based information streaming and aggregation tools were unveiled at the legendary event and created quite a buzz.

An interesting albeit  self-serving observation: while all these players have considerable scope and large user-bases, none have clearly articulated a business model around location-based info.  Mobile coupons are the only area that we can see right now where a clear value proposition exists for merchants and marketers to serve timely and targeted communications to consumers when they are closest to making a purchase decision.  It is important for users to consider this – yeah location sharing is cool with friends and contacts and it makes for some pretty neat interactions but question what you, the user are getting out of the deal as you are increasingly asked to share information about your location.

• Target Brings Mobile Coupons Mainstream. Target will become the first retailer to accept mobile coupons at all of its locations across the country. Customers will soon be able to redeem mobile barcode coupons with a quick scan at checkout at any of Target’s retail stores.  This is a game changer for large retailers and a fantastic development for mobile marketers because it will bring greater awareness to mobile coupons amongst mainstream marketers and most importantly consumers.

• Compete.com released survey results showing “Smartphone Users Want Mobile Coupons.“  The survey asked smartphone owners how interested they were in receiving various types of mobile advertising.  The results were quite interesting, indicating consumers were most interested in receiving grocery coupons (36%), scanable barcodes (29%), offers to save and pursue at leisure (26%), movie theater offers (26%) and ads via SMS when going by a retailer with a promotion/ coupon (21%). The fact that over 1 in 5 smartphone owners would be interested in these top-5 concepts is very promising for the mobile marketing industry, considering that it’s still in the early stages of mainstream adoption.  Link to Article on Mobile Marketing Watch.
• NYTimes article says Small Business Need to Follow Google’s Lead and Adopt a Mobile-First Approach.  The article looks at why it is so important to have a mobile footprint to reach consumers looking for information on the go and discusses how small businesses can leverage existing tools and build a mobile strategy.  Interesting, no mention of location-based mobile coupons but a good read nonetheless.

That’s all for now. We will continue to add worthwhile content and keep our followers informed as to the latest industry news and trends. If you have anything to add to the convo or have an interesting link for us – send it over!  To be sure,  we view this buzz as being extremely positive for the future of mobile services in Canada and around the world.  Rock on!