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There seems to be a fear, not just in major brands but also in SMEs, about mobile marketing. We all relate to the subject based on how we feel about our mobile phones. Just ask around the office right now, or your family, how they feel about marketing messages on their mobiles, and you will see where this fear could stem from. For the vast majority of people, receiving a marketing message on your mobile is a no-no.
However, mobile marketing is not just about sending a text/SMS to a willing (or unwilling) recipient. Mobile marketing needs to be thought of as a far broader church. Once you understand what a mobile phone is capable of, and how your potential audience are most likely to use theirs, then you can target your actions appropriately.
For instance, SMEs, retail outlets and rural businesses should all be at the least listed on Foursquare. This is one of those discrete and gentle touches with mobile marketing and geolocation. A simple sticker in your window, register your venue/outlet/premises on the Foursquare site, and offer a Mayoral prize each week to attract customers to check in.
You can take this further by organising flash mobs at your venue or shop and offering a special FourSquare badge or similar to those who attend. Tie this in with a Tweet-up and people will hang around that much longer. And spend, remember, talk, tweet about the event etc. Don’t forget a good hashtag for Twitter….
Apps are of course the big thing and generally these fall into three main courts – iPhone, Blackberry and Android. Whatever you do with mobile marketing should try to reach all the bodies of smartphone users, or risk alienating those who are left out.
Starting with the simplest type of engagement, you can encourage people to take photos either of your venue, products or for a themed competition. Add a little creativity, such as encouraging instant uploads with Instagram, or composing them into Photograms, and almost anyone with a camera phone and an app can enter.
Perhaps this is where many people fall down in the definition of ‘marketing’. It is no longer simply push marketing that is required, but now, especially with social networks, pull marketing with heavy consumer engagement is equally as important.
So, it is no longer about billboards and TV adverts that force feed the information about a product to the consumer, but very much more about dialogue, engagement and consumer interaction.
What else can you do with mobile marketing? What are you doing with mobile marketing that you feel others couldn/should be doing too?
After pharmaceutical scams and “insane demand”, Google has closed invitations for its new social media project, Google+.
The company said it had not expected the huge rush to get into the closed-invite beta this week, but was suitably impressed with the buzz it had created.
Even news that a bunch of “amateur” scammers had sent out fake invites, which redirected users to a website selling pharmaceuticals, has failed to dampen Google’s party.
But now the whole success of Google+ could rest on Apple’s decision as to whether it will allow the site to run an app on iOS.
Apple has blocked Google’s apps before – but it supports Facebook and Twitter.
The company is still enjoying a huge slice of the smartphone and tablet market, so it could prove a real stumbling block for Google if Apple declines its app.
The BBC reports that a Google employee had revealed the application via her Google+ page.
Apple previously refused Google’s “Voice” app is it said it replicated one of the iPhone’s core functions. And with Apple increasingly extolling the benefits of “facetime”, Google may find its most popular new feature – the Hangout video chat application – may fall foul of the App store’s terms of use too.
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For those on Twitter or with an iPhone, audio boos are likely to be well known, and are one of the most frequent tweets, whoever you follow.
For those who don’t know what an audio boo is, it is a short audio recording, usually accompanied by a static photo. In order to submit an audio boo, you require an iPhone as it is an iphone application, and hence the majority of audioboos are from individuals rather than businesses.
However, many companies are starting to realise the potential of audioboos to create short audio blog posts, rather like a very short podcast, which can be a heads up for new content on your website, notice of sales or discounts, comment about industry news, or a quick interview with an employee, supplier or customer.
Using multimedia to promote your business is becoming essential as we are fast moving beyond the static days of text and images on the web. So, if any of your staff have an iPhone, experiment with audioboos today to provide additional content for your website visitors, and promotional opportunities with the search engines and social media.
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Is your site mobile friendly? It is going to need to be now! Google have added voice search to their app for the iPhone, and let’s face it, this is one app that is likely to be heavily used by consumers. Particularly as it uses the iPhone GPS to track down local restaurants, bars, garages, businesses etc etc etc using MyLocation.
You can download it from iTunes and judging by the comments today from those trying it out, it seems to be pretty efficient at recognising even complex questions or search terms. We’ve said it before but if your website isn’t mobile search friendly, you are really going to start missing out on custom now this has been launched. Others will no doubt follow suit, and if it really is faster than the keyboard for conducting searches, as intimated, this could well become the mobile search tool of choice for iphone users.
