Mobile Marketing’s Uncharted Territory

It’s one of marketing’s fundamental trends: As global smartphone usage rises, an ever-greater share of online activity moves to mobile devices. The shift means that mobile is becoming a fundamental element of business strategy for nearly every industry.

Marketers ranging from big brands to small businesses are just starting to incorporate mobile channels into their paid, owned, and earned marketing strategy. They’re learning that mobile marketing tactics differ greatly from those used in desktop, TV or print campaigns. Mobile requires specific goals, strategy and tactical execution in order to reach the right audience with the right message at the right time. For example, some campaigns work to boost brand awareness, while others seek to engage high-value customers. The learning curve can be steep, so marketers often hesitate before they devote more resources to mobile.

This uncharted territory catches marketers in a bind—they want to increase their mobile spend, but they’re not sure how to proceed.

Recently, we’ve observed the emergence of many new mobile advertising partners who aim to support marketers’ new demand. In fact, the TUNE® Marketing Console is integrated with over 800 of those partners. This represents a challenge for marketers, who must choose advertising partners than can help them reach their goals of driving results on mobile.

At TUNE, we built a solution to this problem by listening to our customers from both sides of the mobile economy—marketers such as Playdots or Ibotta and advertising partners like Amazon and AppLift. In these conversations, we received a consistent message: Mobile marketing has lacked reliable industry standards that inspire confidence in marketers for them to trust that they’re working with the best partners.

The TUNE Certified Partner Program

We took the industry’s feedback and developed standards based on current best practices in mobile marketing. These criteria guide TUNE’s Certified Partner Program—a first-of-its-kind accreditation method designed to bring advertising partners and marketers together through a seamless working experience.

The Certified Partner Program recognizes partners with a proven record of meeting marketers’ needs. TUNE Certified Partner candidates are evaluated with a measurement scorecard which includes standard industry best practices.

TUNE designed the Certified Partner Program to evolve along with the industry. The program will adapt to ensure that its standards and best practices stay current.

A Seamless Experience

Why is it important to create a seamless working experience for marketers and partners? Because it’s a fact that marketers do their best work within hassle-free relationships.

When TUNE® Marketing Console marketers work with certified partners, those partners can use the TUNE® Partner Portal to review their client’s campaign. Both sides can trust that they’re working with the same data and results, so there’s no need to send spreadsheets back-and-forth. Marketers and partners can co-manage campaigns and optimize tactics. The result is greater campaign visibility and improved results.

TUNE chose the first wave of certified partners based on region, inventory scale, performance, and a positive record of serving the needs of marketers. We also chose partners who adhere to industry best practices.

The Certified Partner Program makes marketing better by providing clear and unbiased information so marketers can spend time on creating new campaigns and delivering the best results on mobile. That’s crucial, because better campaigns create trust. And greater confidence in mobile marketing means we’ll all get the chance to build a better experience for the consumer.

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Author

As COO, Cameron oversees operations at TUNE, including human resources, global office operations, IT and customer service teams. Previously, Cameron was GM leading TUNE's flagship product, HasOffers, actively contributing to business development and product strategies. Before joining the company in 2009, Cameron worked with Robert Half International for Fortune 500 clients, developing and maintaining relationships by consulting corporations on their organizational development and staffing needs. Since joining TUNE in 2009, Cameron has combined his business development and leadership experience with customer-centric views to deliver an experience that revolutionizes customer care standards in the industry. Cameron graduated from Washington State University with a Bachelor’s in Finance and Economics.