Redefining sales and marketing in the new era – are you ready for it?

Mobile marketing: Closing the gap to your consumers
For any corporation, identifying the right sales and marketing strategy very much determines revenue growth of the business. Gone were the days when a GE salesman shows up at your door, asking you to consider their latest vacuum cleaner for carpets while your floor gleams of marble. Many marketing strategies today tend to be customer focused, where Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programmes are essential for engaging and retaining loyalty among customers through identifying their needs and wants. Yet, many still look to traditional forms of media to achieve their objectives – not daring to venture into the infinite possibilities with mobile marketing for fear of a lack of ‘tangible’ measurements. Let’s explore the myths and truths.

“Why Mobile?” Because the world is at your feet – literally!
Did you know that the mobile phone industry has just celebrated a historic milestone as it connected the second billionth GSM mobile phone user in the world? According to the GSM Association, new mobile users are signing up at the rate of 1,000 per minute (just under 18 per second)! This only means that mobile phones are certainly 'bridging the digital divide' at an astonishing rate with relevant, affordable solutions that help businesses and economies to grow as well as keeping people in touch.

Myth: “It’s so impersonal”
Truth: Mobile gets you closer to your consumers!
The mobile phone is the ultimate one-to-one personal marketing medium to your consumer. It is always on, anytime, anywhere and is always with you, like a trusted buddy. As consumers respond less to traditional marketing, mobile marketing offers a closer connection with individual consumers – enabling them to interact with your brand. Using the mobile as a marketing medium represents a more effective, cost efficient and measurable means of building a closer, more personal, two-way relationship with your consumers.

Myth: “Mobile marketing is spamming”
Truth: Mobile creates new opportunities for businesses!
New mobile marketing applications put you in control – without fear of losing your database to spammers or unsolicited parties. Yet, the one thing that keeps media and brand owners awake at night is the invasion of their consumer’s privacy, which may incur high customer churn. That is not the case. In fact, when deployed effectively, mobile puts people ‘in control’ of what they want to receive, when and where they receive it. And when your brand provides relevant and genuine valuable services and information, it has the capacity to deeply integrate your brand into the lifestyles of consumers.

Imagine you are stuck in traffic, on your way to the cinema because you have forgotten to purchase the tickets for a movie with your girlfriend tonight. Opening a WAP or HTTP connection to the local movie theatre portal can be made at just a push of the button on your mobile phone. After the ticket purchase, you notice a flower store icon below your browser. To ease your guilt, you click on it and voila! You show up with both your flowers and tickets in hand, and, a smile on your face!

Mobile marketing brings marketers like you and marketing service providers together for new business opportunities and ventures (as in the example above, the flower store found its perfect customer in the entertainment and lifestyle community). Global brands from all sectors are using mobile to communicate with millions of consumers. The most common form of mobile marketing includes text-based sales promotions for consumer goods (mobile vouchers or free mobile content download) and direct responses to advertising and interactive television (voting campaigns). Today, mobile marketing allows you to reach targeted community groups and conduct mCommerce – see the difference?

Myth: “It’s not for my business”
Truth: You’re missing out!
Almost half of the current mobile market value is in the form of mobile personalization services such as ringtones, logos, wallpapers, etc. Market trends seem to point future growth to over US$1.7 billion by 2010 from value-added services categories such as general entertainment, interactive media services, gaming, and information.

More elaborate and integrated mobile marketing is already emerging in the form of mobile promotion coupons, branded multi-level games and CRM marketing that includes personalized information alerts (customer retention), loyalty schemes, and mobile community marketing. A good example is Dunkin Donuts’ mobile marketing campaign in Italy to raise awareness of the brand. Supported by some forms of mass medium, doughnut lovers were invited to enter a prize draw using SMS, receiving in return a money-off or free coffee voucher sent back to the consumer's handset for redemption in stores. Through the campaign, Dunkin Donuts made further interactions with its customers by offering them options to search to obtain addresses of its outlets, statistics regarding Dunkin Donuts, or employment information. Redemption of the SMS coupon in-store and purchase of a doughnut automatically entered users into a draw for a free Piaggio scooter.

Myth: “I can’t measure its success”
Truth: How are you "measuring" your marketing tactics now?
At a small fraction of the price you pay for traditional mass medium, the integration of mobile marketing into your strategy mix can enable you to:

Acquire customers and keep their loyalty

Build and strengthen your brand

Distribute promotional offers to consumers

Drive purchases with instant mobile coupons

Extend marketing programs by adding a direct response channels

Deliver results through data driven, accountable marketing programs

In many cases, mobile marketing can offer tracking and reporting of success metrics as well as specialised targeting. Major brands like BMW, Expedia, IBM, Microsoft and Panasonic are recognizing the power of marketing to the affluent, trend-setting audience of tech-savvy mobile phones and PDA users. What they are finding is that the return on investment (ROI) is much higher than traditional online advertising. How? Because the targeted recipients tend to be a captive, receptive audience who are accessing their devices while on the go—on a plane, on the subway, in a meeting etc.

Mobile marketing should encompass more than just building brand awareness. It needs to be a part of the overall marketing strategy, helping companies to not only manage their overall brand message, but also to improve customer relationships, educate customers about products and solutions, and essentially give the company even greater control over its sales channels.

This might sound like a tremendous task for the mobile to deliver, but it isn't. Consider Yahoo, Google, MSN, CNN and BBC who have implemented mobile Web site strategies to help extend their existing Web site, bringing rich, interactive information directly into the hands of their customers.

Websites optimized for mobile devices have the power to:

Identify the customer's demographics

Help the customer obtain information on your brand

Create a one-to-one shopping experience through incentives

Educate the customer about technology, products and solutions

Deliver useful applications direct to the customer

For a marketer, developing a strong mobile strategy around your sales channels should be one of the most important factors to consider when reaching a targeted and, more importantly, a receptive, audience.

If you think mobile marketing may not work for you, think again.

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