Mobile Marketing& Your Audience
If you think about the most used item that you own, what would it be? We are likely making a pretty good guess to say it’s your mobile phone. After all, more than 50% of South Africans look at their phones first thing in the morning. With those stats in mind, it is not difficult to see that mobile marketing is now an undeniably important platform that has a massive coverage towards your potential clients.
There is a magnitude of methods to promote your brand on cell phones and other mobile devices. It aims at a highly specified target market that are location sensitive and relevant. Therefore, it has been one of the most commonly (and effectively) used methods of promoting a product or service.
With more than a decade of experience in the industry, we at Channel Mobile specialises in a variety of mobile marketing methods that are readily available. Here are some tips on how to use it to reach your audience:
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Bulk SMS (short message service) and MMS (multimedia messaging services)
The most direct and original method of mobile advertising is bulk smsing your advert to a target group of cellular phone numbers. This dates back to the late 90’s and early 2000’s before the invention of smart phones. The target audiences are selected through a list of criteria including age, gender, profession, ethnicity (just to name a few examples) to ensure that the audience is relevant and are likely to require the services you offer. MMS works similarly, but replaces plain text with a media file (image, voice or video). Although these methods have taken a backseat to online mobile marketing, they still work great for industries such as insurance companies, retail store promotions, specialty service providers, among others.
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USSD
Have you ever taken notice of that weird phone number with the * and # that you dial to recharge airtime? That is an USSD code. Its influence into the mobile marketing industry stemmed from the “please call me” messages. To fund these free messaging services, mobile service providers allow for marketing companies to put an advertisement underneath the messages. This reaches the target audiences in a similar way to bulk sms’s. Additionally, USSD codes allow for a two-way exchange of data which are captured and forms an essential part of conglomerating the target criteria information.
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Smart Phone Banners
Moving on from the basic mobile marketing strategies, we are now entering the digital age. Smart mobile devices have taken over a major part of lives whether its media (music, images, video), apps (games, lifestyle apps, social media, etc), or search engine, we now use our smartphones for everything. Therefore, inserting an advertising banner into the users’ daily mobile usage is an effective and simple way to promote your product. Users have grown accustomed to seeing these banners and will find these advertisements quite useful in most cases. It saves them the effort of actively searching for a service provider and they can simply click on the banner to be taken to the relevant website of a company.
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Mobile Websites
This brings us to the next point. Here in South Africa, there are still many people who are not putting enough focus on the importance of mobile sites. Many websites are not compatible with mobile devices and can either present a badly fit home page or slow your device down. Globally, there are now more mobile users than desktop users, which means that designing a smartphone compatible site can greatly boost your audience views. Just think to yourself, how many times have you closed a company’s website because it didn’t want to open up properly? The likely thing you might do is search for an alternate company that offers the same services you need. Therefore, having a user-friendly mobile page can attract your potential clients as opposed to losing them through bad website.
With these suggestions on mobile marketing, it is easy to determine a marketing method that is suitable for your industry or line of business. The biggest benefit of incorporating mobile marketing is that the views are instantaneous and the results measurable. Contact us today to receive the best advice from one of our professional consultants on a strategy that works for you.