Book Review: The Third Screen – Marketing to your Customers in a World Gone Mobile
A few months ago I contacted Chuck Martin on how I could get a copy of his book and he was nice enough to send me a complimentary copy. These last few months have been filled with highs and lows both which have kept me very busy and gave me the opportunity to read this book by portions. In many years It had not taken me so long to read a book but I think I got a bit more out of it because I could focus on each section a bit more.
The The Third Screen: Marketing to Your Customers in a World Gone Mobile
(affiliate link) pretty much summarizes how mobile marketing is very different from any other platform. I really enjoyed how he differentiates and gives good clear examples on how they are different focusing on the positive attributes that each platform or possible mobile effort can bring you.
Bring in the Experts
Throughout the book there are areas where Chuck makes sure to emphasize that for most specific mobile efforts you should bring someone that has experience with dealing with mobile efforts. We all have our areas of expertise and mobile efforts are so new to many of us that why would you clearly use someone that is not well experienced in the subject if you want your effort to be a win.
Some key takeaways from Chuck’s Book are
- How mobile is revolutionizing the entire buying process from product research all the way though transactions based on location. He highlights how mobile is more about committing to interactions.
- The importance of creating your efforts to the type of phone that your target market owns and uses. There is a universe of phones and if your effort is not aligned around the type of phones your target customers it might work against your.
- Mobile Advertising is about hitting the moving target. Since it is transitioning near and away from products and services.
- Risk of businesses that do not adapt is twofold:
- Companies will miss opportunities to the mobile trend.
- It will lose customers who find and interact with a competitor instead.
- Taking into consideration the speed from App to Web and how that will affect your customers. Very useful when taking the decision of creating an app for your business or just using the mobile side.
- The core of mobile is linking buyers to Sellers
- The book also has a great set of questions that will help and serves a guideline for when you are ready to plan any mobile effort.
- The risk of how you can kill your mobile effort if the only interaction you are creating is discounting.
- Mobile is not incremental it is transformational.
- How businesses can keep up with the use of mobile from uses to applications.
- Attention spans are shorter on mobile
- Immediate call to action
- Customers can be reached on location
Overall The The Third Screen can serve as a guide for many of us who are interested in learning about mobile from unique apps, case studies, use of QR Codes, and understanding the behavioral changes mobile brings to this world. I recommend you to buy this book as a learning tool, which later you can keep around as a reference either to create mobile content or creating the policies around its use in many organizations.
I want to thank Chuck for the complimentary copy and congratulate him on the detailed job he did on this book which clearly helped me understand mobile a lot more.
If you want to buy your copy of The Third Screen feel free to click the image below. (Affiliate Link)