What you Need to Know Before Starting a Mobile Marketing Campaign

Over the past twenty seven years, the mobile phone has changed tremendously. What started out as the Motorola DynaTAc 8000X, weighing 2lbs. with only 30mins of talk time and costing $3,995, has now turned into the iPhone, weighing 4.8oz. with up to 14hrs of talk time and costing at most $199, or the Droid, weighing 6.0oz. with up to 6hrs of talk time and costing $199. Not only have the physical traits changed, but also the technology within the phone. It used to be used solely for making calls, but now, it can be used to play games, text, surf the internet, and more. The phones of today has also changed the way in which companies can do business, because all the innovations, businesses can now use it as a new marketing channel.

Mobile Marketing

This is called mobile marketing. Mobile marketing used to mean that businesses would advertise themselves on the road, like billboards and such. However, there is now a new definition for mobile marketing. According to the MMA, Mobile Marketing Association, the definition is “Mobile Marketing is a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network.” There are many different ways to take advantage of the phone to market to the consumer. With so many capabilities, businesses can do anything from push and pull texting to making an app. The marketing channels made available with a mobile marketing campaign are: SMS and MMS, Apps, Mobile Web, Bluetooth, Infrared, and more. Since mobile marketing is still somewhat new, if a business started today, it would still have the upper hand on their competitors. Mobile marketing is pin-point and personal. It is the most effective way to get to consumers. Don’t miss on the most recent development in the marketing world!

Here at Nine Multimedia, we would like guide you through your thought process as you decide on whether or not to pursue a mobile campaign.

Pros and Cons

Starting a mobile campaign can do wonders for your business. Using pretty much a cost-benefit analysis, which in this case would be the pros and cons to creating a mobile campaign, you can see for yourself why you should have a mobile campaign.

The pros are that phones are a much more effective marketing channel. Here are the facts to prove it:

There are four times the number of cell phones in the world versus PCs (4Bn vs. 1Bn) and 20% of all U.S. households are now “mobile-only.”
Eventually, there will be more internet searches conducted on phone than computers
- In absolute terms, Smartphone traffic increased 193% over the last year.
- Mobile phones will take over PC’s as the most common web access device by 2013
- The access to a phone is much easier than a computer, especially in poorer countries
  - Cell phones are used by over 3.1 billion people globally.
  - Mobile phones are more likely to be on than computers
  - Phones are more personal and carried everywhere, presenting the opportunity for better customer service
    - Young adults (18-29) say their phone is the most important device they own.
    - A survey of 2,400 moms reveals that the single most important tech gadget in their lives is the cell phone (23%), followed by the Internet (21%) and the digital camera (19%).
    - People are more likely to read a text message than an e-mail
      - Fewer than 20% of email messages are opened. Within 15 minutes of sending a text blast, over 95% of your subscribers will have read the message.
      - 62% of mobile phone owners currently not using mobile internet say that they would want to use their mobiles to access the same websites they do on their computers.
      - Today, innovations are more focused on mobile phones than computers

As stated earlier, another benefit in starting a mobile is that it provides your company with another marketing channel and another means to sell your product, using the e-commerce platform. By marketing through mobile devices it also makes easier to reach potential customers with push and pull texting. Using push and pull texting, you can market to them while they are on-the-go and it helps you generate buzz. Then once you get their attention, you can gain their loyalty by having them the opt-in with their phones, creating a customer database for yourself. And lastly, it will enable capitalization on consumer’s opportune moments. Consumers are always on the go, so you never know if they need something that you can offer them right that minute.

For the cons, the current WAP, or Wireless Application Protocol, is not optimal yet and the 3G and 4G network are not available in many places, but that would not be a problem if you plan to stay in the US. Therefore, the location of your business will play a big part in whether this is right for you or not. Going along with the optimization problem, there are many different platforms, providers, and devices out there, so if you pick the wrong company to help you with your mobile campaign, then everything could turn out to be a bust that is why you should rely on experts like Nine Multimedia. Another problem is that since it is a marketing strategy that targets consumers’ most personal electronic devices, it creates an annoyance factor of being bombarded with ads, so timing is everything. Besides being annoying, there are issues regarding privacy. And with the FCC still undecided about limiting use and releasing customer data, it is like treading through murky waters. Mobile marketing is still new, so you have to take into account that there are not many mobile campaigns out there. Lastly, there is always the problem of the digital divide where many that have not learned how to access all of the Smartphone’s capabilities, so some would not be able to view the campaign, but that can all be solved with some education from either your company or the company that helped you with your mobile campaign.

Common Mistakes

Good, you’ve decided to go mobile. To get you started on formulating your strategy for your mobile campaign, here are some common mistakes many businesses make in the two areas that make or break a campaign: the campaign itself and the text messages. The main problem with starting a mobile campaign is that many companies do not know what direction to take with it. While they decide, this is when the mistakes arise. They start to make errors like making the campaign irrelevant, confusing, and impersonal, targeting to the wrong crowd, and starting at the wrong time and place. The biggest mistake is that the campaign does not even promote your company. Other mishaps could be as simple as typos or trapping your subscribers to the lack of constant promotion. Lastly, the technological and legal mistakes are not optimizing it for all the separate platforms and not complying with anti-spam legislation.

As for the secondary part of the campaign, the text messages can also tremendously affect how well your campaign helps or hinders your company. The missteps here are again, timing and place, and annoyance.

Key Concepts

After learning about the common mistakes, you can now start to strategize. Here are some concepts and ideas to keep in mind. It should be a priority figuring out what the main goal of the campaign is and do not lose focus. When creating the actually mobile site or app, make sure you know what platform it is that you are working with. With the mobile campaign, it needs to correlate with you business and maintains your brand value. Furthermore, the campaign has to be extremely interactive and readily available for everyone. This is where you can get very creative. You could entice people to check you out, with like a contest or a giveaway. Or, you could create an exclusive club that your consumer’s can join, or use push and pull texting to get fans to text you and so you can text back. Once you do all that, getting feedback could be a huge help and it will aid you in tracking the performance of the campaign. The mobile campaign should create buzz, take charge, and separate you from your competitors. The end result should have customers loving the campaign at first look. An important matter to keep in mind is that there needs to be balance. Although you are going mobile, you should also treat this like any other marketing campaign. It is a new channel, but the messages should correlate with your other campaigns. Lastly, at all cost, avoid the simple mistakes.

Princing

For the last and probably the most important part: the pricing. The best way to take a look is to compare prices between companies that can help you create a mobile campaign. (Each of the packages contains pretty much the same capabilities and is set to subscriptions per month.)

Nine Mobile

Starter: $49

Standard: $99

Professional: $199

Campaign Mobile

Starter: $20

Standard: $100

Professional: $300

84444

Starter: $79

Standard: $99

Professional: $229

Starting a Mobile Campaign

You’ve decided, planned, and now you want to get started. First, you need to reach out and contact a mobile marketing firm, preferably Nine Multimedia. From there, you should talk over your plans for your mobile marketing campaigns and anticipate a question like: What do you want to say to your customers? Next, take into account what the firm had to say and talk it over with other people, and then make the necessary changes. Now, the campaigning begins, you should sign and figure out if you have a database of customers or not. If not, then ask customers to opt-in for alerts and messages. If yes, then load database and send messages, market. From there, you launch it and track its performance.

Here at Nine Multimedia, we never get tired of telling people to go mobile. Tom Marchesello, CEO, says “the best way to market your business is by mobilizing it, and as you can see, there are many reasons as to why mobile marketing is important and effective.” We continue to present the facts and statistics to show the importance of going mobile, and when you decide to go mobile as well, we will be here for you.

Give us your opinion and get to know us:

http://ninemultimedia.com

htt://ninemobile.com

References:

http://cloudrecruiting.net/mobile-recruiting-the-basics-of-building-a-campaign/

http://marketing.bestmanagementarticles.com/a-37662-5-great-ideas-for-your-next-mobile-marketing-campaign.aspx

http://searchengineland.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-mobile-marketing-12207

http://www.quirk.biz/resources/mobile101/282/Pros-and-Cons-of-Mobile-Marketing

http://www.relativitycorp.com/mobilemarketing/article8.html

http://www.wmps.com/blog/online-marketing/mobile-marketing/pros-and-cons-of-mobile-marketing/

http://www.ekobuzz.com/blogs/9-common-mistakes-mobile-marketing-campaigns

http://ezinearticles.com/?Five-Mistakes-You-Must-Avoid-in-Your-Mobile-Marketing-Campaign&id=3831231