Mobile marketing
Mobile phone service offers business to-business (B2B) and business-to consumer (B2C) merchants, new and better ways to promote their brands, interact with existing and potential customers, and process sales.
Mobile phones are changing the way people shop & have thus given rise to the concept of Mobile Marketing.
Marketing on a mobile phone has become increasingly popular ever since the rise of SMS (Short Message Service) in the early 2000s in Europe. Consumers can use text messages to access promotions, enter contests, and buy products and services. Merchants can use text messages to send customers reminders, perform quick surveys, and deliver sales receipts.
Why Mobile Marketing
The Mobile Marketing channel offers direct access to consumers, instant and measurable market feedback, ongoing relationships with customers, and the ability to take advantage of impulse buying.
Mobile phones offer more powerful targeting, interactivity and personalization capabilities than the Internet. They enable viral marketing by connecting with the consumers at the right time and the right place thereby increasing brand awareness and generating instant and direct responses.
It integrates nicely with customer loyalty/rewards programs. Customers making purchases with mobile phones can receive points, view totals, and redeem points for awards at the same time.
It also facilitates the merchants to create richer and more reliable customer databases.
Mobile Marketing Tools
The Mobile phone communications include voice, messaging, and wireless data. The messaging services include standard rate Short Message Service (SMS) Premium rate SMS (Premium SMS), and the new Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).
Mobile Marketing via SMS has expanded rapidly in Europe, US and Asia as a new channel to reach the consumer. The reasons for accelerated use of SMS are:
Premium SMS is used to deliver regular updates on a subscription basis or to purchase a ringtone.
Delivering of promotional content such as mobile music to mobile games to drive consumer engagement is done via MMS (Multimedia Message Service).
The Mantra so far:
Mobile marketing is step-by-step gaining foothold in the advertising field. Merchants can work with mobile advertising aggregators thus acting as brokers for ad space on existing WAP pages, applications, and videos.
Small merchants may start by working with text groups or online stores offering mobile content whereas larger organizations may develop comprehensive mobile marketing strategies.
Branded mobile phone service may be offered by a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). An MVNO is a wireless service provider employing another operator s network. groups, and prepaid users) with differentiated devices, services and pricing packages.
To sum it up:
Mobile marketing offers exceptional opportunities for establishing direct, immediate, and individualized relationships with customers and potential customers. Brand owners and operators must develop, implement and propagate policies that protect the end users from meddling practices and privacy abuses so as to make the mobile marketing experiences pleasant, entertaining and informative for the consumers.
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