Sometimes, a clear invitation to action is not always clear in traditional mass media advertising. The television viewer, for example, is often left wondering: “What exactly do they want from me?”. My advertising industry colleagues will tell me this vague, non-existent call to action type of advertising is, in fact, ‘brand building’. Other people would venture it’s art created to win awards and has little commercial merit.
Things are quite different in the mobile advertising space. We’ve spoken before in these pages of the need for mobile marketers to be bold when it comes to asking for a product or service purchases from the cellular consumer. Because mobile marketing is about supporting consumer behaviour in ways that are personalised and relevant to the individual shopper in their time of need, we’re not afraid to talk about the rands and cents. After all, the pursuit of real purchasing behaviour is why we are all in business. Commerce and industry is nothing without actual buying.
Forget schooling clients on ‘brand building’ and other intangible, nice-to-have aspects of traditional advertising, mobile marketers have a responsibility to advise their clients on the best and most cost-effective ways of chasing that money. Here at InTarget we’ve come up with some practical ways to encourage consumer buying:
By motivating current and potential customers to check-in at your business using social media like Facebook, Yelp and other platforms; one could combine that with mobile-based coupons sent via SMS or bluetooth. This could be very visibly promoted throughout your bricks and mortar store, helping the digital and real world realms to seamlessly converge. Couponing is directly related to consumer buying.
Developing email marketing campaigns in consultation with a mobile marketing specialist will see the creation of mobile-friendly layouts that stimulate purchasing. These recognise the fact that the number of people reading email using smartphones increases in leaps and bounds each year. Feature phones are huge in Africa, but smartphones are getting there! Here, you need to remember that website landing pages the mobile user would reach via a mobile click need to be scaled down and built for mobile as well.
Finally, QR Codes on marketing materials and product packaging not only looks
space age, but is a very real way to provide the consumer with that last bit of
vital buying information needed to part with that hard-earned cash.
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