Mobile Phone Marketing

It used to be that walking down the street, everyone you’d pass by had their cell phone plastered to their ear engaged in either a business deal or just catching up with friends. Now, however, the times have changed and so have the communication trends.

People of all ages have joined the band wagon of text messaging. According to the Mobile Marketing Association, 40% of US Mobile phone user’s text. In class rooms and meeting rooms around the world people are sneaking a text message underneath the table. I am guilty of it too. It’s a more secretive way to have a conversation without actually talking. Now a day it’s hard not to find a person who is rapidly punching their key pad of their phone.

Question: With consumer’s attention constantly on their hand held toy, how can we as marketers get their attention?

Answer: Why not send ads to them via text messaging?

Communicate with your consumers the way they communicate with each other. It’s quick, easy, and less expensive than a large billboard ad or a national commercial spot.
Companies have already started doing this. Take the new video rental company Red Box for example. Ever Monday, at 10:00 a.m. on the dot, my cell phone vibrates with a new text message giving me a free rental promotional code in case I want to rent a movie for the night. (see picture above) I hardly use it every Monday I get it, but it is simple brand awareness and incentive. When I do feel in the mood to rent a movie, I am going to think of Red Box first because I see their name on my phone every week so the brand name is familiar. Also, by them sending me a free movie, I feel they value me as a consumer and are willing to lose money on that free rental with the risk that I’m going to rent more from them in the future.

One of the more popular advertisements through texting is in-game sporting updates from ESPN or Yahoo sports. Keeping up on your favorite sports team is a high priority for many sports fans. This allows them to find out scores and stats on all sports. By giving consumers this option from their phone, when they actually have access to other forms of technology such as a computer or TV, they will me more prone to visit ESPN or Yahoo because they have been their trusted sporting news feeder.

Communicating with your consumer’s the way they communicate with each other is a great way to steal their attention and gain brand awareness for your company. Be tasteful in your advertising as to not turn your customer’s away with the annoyance of a pesky marketer. Give them rewards such as a free movie rental with Red Box, or help them with something they are passionate about such as sports with ESPN or Yahoo.

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Marketing On The Move

Marketing on the move is a more efficient way to get your name out there than the normal stationary marketing.

I sold my car about 3 years ago. When I began the journey, I put a couple of ads in a local car magazine for 3 weeks resulting in just one call. After no success, I decided to just write straight on the windows of my car and after driving around for 2 days with it written all over the windows, I sold it.

This is a simple example of how mobile marketing works. Get your logo, name, brand, etc. out and about and more people will be exposed to it helping increase your brand awareness which is a main goal of many companies.

One company that comes to my mind when I think of mobile marketing is Red Bull. On numerous occasions, I have encountered the Red Bull car and the sales reps who are handing out free cans of Red Bull. This gets the product into consumer’s hands so that when they are faced with a purchasing decision later on, they might remember the Red Bull they had before and that might have more of an influence on which drink they choose.

Bud Light and Monster Energy Drink are two other beverage companies that do a similar style of mobile marketing. Both owned and operated by Anheuser Busch, the two beverage giants are reinventing the term, “pimp my ride.”

Bud Light MXT:
This supped up truck comes equipped with 3 flat screen TV’s, a state-of-the-art sound system, an Xbox 360, Guitar Hero III, and a promotional tent. All of these added features contribute to the marketing campaign for Bud Light. Parking this vehicle at events all over the nation can attract numerous consumers of all ages. On one hand, this can be good because your mixing beer with entertainment for the of age adults which is something that Bud Light seems to being striving to do. On the other hand, with the gaming systems, the majority of gamers that play those kinds of games are under the legal drinking age and this could entice them to illegal actions. Bud Light needs to be careful of what audience they are focusing towards.

Monster Truck:
Monster Energy Drink has a similar tactic to Red Bull. They have a scaled down, “Monster Truck”, fittingly named for their product that drives around and makes appearances at promotional events as well. The sales reps hand out free cans of Monster in hopes of gaining more energy drink consumers. By having the logo plastered all over this large vehicle, consumers are exposed to the brand image and logo over and over which becomes engrained into their memory. So when they do go to a convenient store or grocery center, they recognize the logo and might be more apt to buy the product that they have heard of or tried before. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

By having your company’s logo and image on the move as opposed to a stationary billboard, it gives you more of a chance at increasing brand awareness and gaining a larger customer base.

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Virtual Viewing

Viewing products online has stepped up to a whole new level.

In the “old days” when consumers were shopping online, they would get one static image of the potential product they wanted to buy. They might have really gotten lucky and been able to get a side view as well.

But this is 2009, 20 years after the World Wide Web was introduced and several years after online shopping really took off. Companies participating in online shopping are starting to step up their game. Take Nike’s basketball shoe website for example. For their new shoe line, “The Six”, they offer a 360 degree, 3D image of a shoe which includes a close-up, close enough to see the stitching and texture of the shoe. Just by dragging the scroll bar across, it gives the consumer the feeling of literally holding the shoe and examining it in their hand. This brings a whole new meaning to the online shopping world. It’s just like standing in the store and rotating the shoe in your hand. By allowing consumers to virtually “hold” the product in their hands without

physically being in the store, companies such as Nike are:

..........A.) Giving the consumer confidence in their potential purchase.

..........B.) Enticing the consumer to visit a nearby store to buy Nike shoes.

..........C.) Having the upper-hand in the new-age online shopping market.

This is the next step into online shopping if companies want to compete with the already advanced ones. Smaller companies might not have the budget amounts as the larger ones, but they can find similar ways to virtually affect the consumer. One way is to take several images of one product at different angles and allow the consumer to access these images to get different views. You might even be able to take a video that continuously runs and rotates the product.

Who knows, maybe the next breakthrough is to make realistic holograms of the products where you can reach out and touch them from your computer chair.

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