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Mobile set to power this Black Friday
Mobile marketing really is coming into its own – and what a relief for our currently underperforming economy. Not only is mobile powering the beleaguered retail sector but now we hear that experts predict the upcoming US Black Friday weekend is set to be the biggest ever. And they attribute the expected weekend sales records to the growth of mobile marketing in that economy. With South African mobile users now having solidly surpassed the 35 million mobile user mark, and the proportion of smartphone users growing very nicely over the past decade, there is very expectation that we’ll similarly experience a stellar Black Friday weekend driven by mobile technology. There is no doubt that retailers that incorporate mobile marketing into their overall sales strategies will reap the benefits of the millions of consumers who have transitioned from simply using their mobiles as communication devices to fully-fledged purchasing tools. From researching to actioning mobile-based purchases, the cellphone has become a 360-degree purchase enabler. The growing importance of mobile is supported by figures from Google that show that 70% of customers purchasing in-store used their smart phones for research before the purchase and that mobiles have overtaken desktops and tablets as devices used for e-commerce, now accounting for 60% of all e-commerce visits. Sadly, despite these encouraging findings, just about half of businesses are purported to be using such basic mobile marketing tools as SMS marketing as part of their marketing plans. SMS is the go-to mobile marketing tool for so many leading corporates and SMEs – it can be used by retailers to increase loyalty, boost online sales, and even...Forget the clutter, content continues as king in 2018
As we steam ever faster towards 2018, it seems there have never before been so many tools, technologies and platforms competing for our ad spend. Many of the CMOs that have today risen to their top of their profession can no doubt remember a time early on in their careers when it seemed like the only choice the corporate marketer had to make was what ad agency to hire and which editor to take out to lunch. Now, as marketers put together their strategies for next year, things have got decidedly confusing and, at times, the options can appear overwhelming. Never mind the ‘Four Ps’ that were a mainstay of every traditional marketing education, now we have the ‘Four Es’ (Experience, Exchange, Everyplace, Evangelism) and the ‘Four Cs’ (Consumer, Cost, Convenience, Communication). We like the latter. The former’s a bit of a stretch of the imagination! Perhaps the overriding thing for the CMO to consider today is that technologies that have hitherto been considered emerging are now beginning to peak as real, tangible options for any marketing budget. Think Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and voice search. Our message is that CMOs should continue to keep their eye on such watchwords as they may indeed be peaking in the developed world, but they still have some time to go in South Africa. Learn about them at conferences, be inspired by what they mean for the future, but if there’s one thing you should prioritise in the local environment for 2018, it remains content! Brands in South Africa are learning but they really need to double-down on creating smart, purposeful...MOBILE TELLS TODAY’S BRAND STORIES
Traditional media has always placed a premium on storytelling. From the early days of purely being a sales-focused discipline, advertising emerged as something of a commercial art devoted to telling the story of a client’s brand. And then along came digital, and later still, mobile. Mobile marketing has had a profound effect on advertising as we have know it. To put a fine point on it, the era of advertising and brand storytelling, has gone by the wayside. Don’t take InTarget’s word for it. This is according to Mastercard Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Raja Rajamannar, who explained the shift in this past October’s Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Masters of Marketing Conference in Orlando, USA. He pointed out the obvious fact that there’s always been something of a conflict between what audiences want from their media consumption, and what advertising want – in a summary, brands want more consumer engagement, consumers want less brand engagement. Essentially, we’ve always just wanted to kick back and enjoy our favorite shows without the darn ads. That being said, give us a freebie and we’re happy to watch a few ads – see: E-TV. Today, however, consumers are thwarting the traditional ad guys’ attempts to tell their brands’ stories in a big way. We’re demanding uninterrupted experiences with media, and going to great lengths to get them. Says Raja. In 2016, there were 200 million daily active users of ad-blocking software. And the figure’s rising. “When consumers are telling you so loudly, ‘I don’t want your stupid ads! I care about my experience,’ holding on to the old paradigm and saying, ‘let’s put...More seamless collaboration between real and virtual worlds in 2018
Mobile’s awesome potential continues to inspire. First, we had the news a year or two back that there are now more people accessing the worldwide web via mobile than via desktop devices. Today, the latest mobile news is that Pizza Hut is pairing extra cheese with emojis in a customer giveaway campaign! Jokes aside, that really is big news. Just when you thought the real and virtual worlds’ collision stopped at Pokemon Go, mobile’s emojis and the fast food industry’s mainstay of melted cheese have been combined into one amazing offering sure to go down well with consumers. No doubt we will see more of this seamless consumerism that so cleverly taps into our love affair with mobile. So what else will we see next year, in mobile year 2018? Julie Bernard, writing in the US’s ‘Advertising Age’, believes that we’ll see a spectrum of in-store, traditional e-commerce, website and mobile combinations – just like in the Pizza Hit example given above. “For the mobile customer, the playing field is wide open,” she writes. For mobile marketers, this purchase-boundary shift represents a special opportunity to innovate, marrying the best of both the physical and digital worlds. According to people like Bernard, the way mobile marketers will take this transformation forward is to intensify our commitment to “seamless, location-informed, and positive brand experiences … wherever and whenever the consumer engages.” Bring on...TWO CRUCIAL TIPS FOR MOBILE VIDEO IN 2018
With about 60 days left of 2017 many mobile marketers, agencies, clients and brands are surely wondering what’s in store for the coming year. In a nutshell, we expect it to be more of the same – but better! The science and art of mobile marketing will continue to make progress as specialist mobile practitioners like InTarget hone their craft. One area that’s surely set for refining is the art of producing video fit for mobile. We’ve mentioned many times in these pages how video is becoming the premier mobile medium with many brands gauging their mobile success based on how any viral video shares they receive. Forget all the other complicated metrics, we’ve encountered brand managers who measure success solely by the views they see after logging onto such video-based platforms as Vimeo, Vine, YouTube and others. With video being the yardstick according to which many mobile marketers measure campaign success, what’s important here? We believe it’s crucial for brands to customise mobile marketing videos not only for different segments but also according to length. Some audiences are demanding video clips as short as a few seconds. Short form video, for example, used to mean anything under a few minutes in length. Today, short form in the mobile marketing community is starting to mean clips about as long as a GIF. There’s a whole science devoted to producing these ultra-short clips and, amazingly, you need significant artistry and creative talent to capture a brand’s entire message in just a fleeting moment in time. It’s InTarget’s view that the days of 90-second, award-winning commercials featuring a wizened old fellow...Mobile is central to your future business
With the remnants of Halloween still lurking around neighborhoods across the length and breadth of the country, it’s tempting to come up with a few scary facts about mobile marketing in today’s blog. This is not to say mobile is scary. What’s really scary is the fact that even though you are highly-likely to be reading this post on a mobile device like a tablet or smartphone, a whopping 32% of companies have NOT integrated mobile marketing into their overall marketing strategy (salesforce.com says 68% have). Indeed, what keeps the folks at InTarget up at night are more shockers like 29% of marketers believe mobile is not central to their business and 42% of companies do NOT have a dedicated mobile marketing team. Forget the monsters hiding under the bed, they’re in boardrooms across the country with their eyes shut and their brains closed to mobile marketing’s potential. Let’s not dwell on the mobile spooky and rather focus on the mobile positive today. In this regard, InTarget would like to share three mobile tips with those of us who have recognised the awesome power and potential of mobile marketing. These are originally fromSmallBizTrends.com, and tweaked by us for local readers: Once you’ve made the decision to go mobile, decide to also implement a mobile customer loyalty scheme. You’ll need to do some Googling but there are many different ideas for different industries that you can replicate. For example, a restaurant reservation app might offer some kind of dining rewards program. Secondly, research what local mobile directories your business can join. For South African firms, Google Local and Yelp are well-used...NIMBLE SME’S
NIMBLE SMEs CAN USE MOBILE TO OWN A SLICE OF THE ACTION The recent mini-budget presented by our incumbent Finance Minister seems to have gone down like a lead balloon. The Minister has, somewhat unfairly, been criticized for a budget speech that was heavy on dire predictions around national debt, for example, and light on tangible solutions. It’s a pity that small business hardly featured in the mini-budget because enabling the growth of an SME sector that contributes 60% to national GDP is indeed a real solution to our current economic woes. It is with SMEs in mind that we write today’s blog. Even though mobile marketing has been shown time and time again to boost cash flow by turning consumer intent into actual rands and cents, a recent study quoted by smallbiztrends.com says 47 percent of small retailers struggle to keep up with mobile marketing trends. This is entirely plausible as the territory of mobile marketing long ago expanded well past the borders of the text message. Things are getting exciting in mobile marketing, and without the right specialist partner, complicated too! InTarget’s mobile advice for SMEs is to firstly master the basics. When dealing with mobile marketing, you’ll want to first and foremost make sure your website is updated and enabled for viewing on mobile devices. So test things out by browsing your own site from Android and Apple devices, across at least three different screen sizes. This will help you pin down any simple web-related issues that need tweaking. Secondly, remember that local really is lekker in mobile. You’ve really got to localise your content to matter these...Five Things That Matter in Mobile
Five Things That Matter in Mobile We hope that readers have found this blog as interesting as we have found writing it. Many unexpected pearls of wisdom have found their way onto these pages in the course of researching the required content. We thought it might be useful to readers if we recapped what we believe are five of the choicest pieces of mobile advice given in 2017. 1. Technology Matters Technology matters for the overall ad experience. This is why it pays to partner with specialist mobile ad consultancies that have years of solid technical experience. Tech matters because speed and how fast pages render are important when considering the ad consumption ecosystem. It’s unforgivable to lose eyes on screens simply because your mobile marketing loads too slowly. 2. Mobile is the Centrepiece Mobile is no longer the afterthought it used to be. Far from from being just an element of the overall plan, mobile is now the centrepiece. As mobile marketers, we had to work so hard just to be included in those regular agency status meetings. Today, mobile is the glue that holds all of the consumer’s purchase-related decisions and actions together. 3. Mobile is not just for Corporates We learnt earlier this year that mobile is not only for large enterprises. With an experienced mobile partner like InTarget, small business owners can easily ramp up that bulk SMS campaign and turn it into a real, multifaceted mobile strategy. We can make a ten-person SME look like a 1 000-person corporation with all the associated reputitonal benefits. 4. Add Video Now Adding video to mobile...
Brevity works best
Brevity works best, make it fun and other mobile marketing lessons As we close in on the tail end of another action-packed year, it’s clear that businesses have faced many challenges trying to break through the clutter and connect with current and potential customers during 2017. The economy’s somewhat subdued, that’s for sure, and it’s easy to spot both large and small local corporations engaged in some serious belt-tightening. However, thankfully South African business has mobile marketing in its quiver of activity-boosting tactics. Mobile can do things faster, cheaper and way more effectively than traditional marketing. Let’s take a quick look at the success of viral cooking videos – of all things! – that have become huge over this past year in an effort to understand what works in mobile. The website ‘mobilebusinessinsights.com’ says when one logs into Facebook nowadays, there’s a good chance we might come across something called ‘Tasty’ videos. According to the website, this is where people make mouthwatering dishes for dinner. These simple yet captivating videos are a form of mobile marketing that’s become hugely popular over the past two years. According to The New York Times, Tasty enjoys a few billions views a month! Wow. So, what can the mobile marketer in challenging times learn from these simple little moving pictures? There are three lessons in Tasty’s success for all of us. We’ve heard these tips before, in different guises, so they really just serve to hammer home what works in the land of mobile marketing. Firstly, brevity is because because consumers have a limited attention space and it’s getting shorter. Alot shorter. Tasty...
Dissecting mobile marketing: what works on the small screen?
Whosay has hedged it bets on influencer marketing as the way to crack the mobile code. According to their 2017 Influence Marketing Insights report, the company found that influence marketing performs better than other forms of media and advertising, achieving three times better video view-through rates on Facebook. “There is a physical change of behavior… around carrying smartphones and we haven’t altered our advertising thinking to address those tactile changes,” said Steve Ellis, chief executive officer of WhoSay. But other than influencers operating on social, does mobile advertising work with consumers? The panelists at Advertising Week New York’s ‘We must be able to do better than this: making better ads for mobile’ panel think so. Ellis hosted the panel and started off by pinpointing what’s not working in the industry, such as banner ads, pop-up ads and pre-rolls ads. He noted that “junk mail, by definition, gets better engagement rates,” than these other advertising techniques, with 1-4% engagement. Engagement rates are only a small part of the picture, with content type, platform and functionality playing a huge part in user experience and the relationship with advertising. Brian Wong, chief executive officer and founder at Kiip, a mobile advertising network, honed in on consumer behavior and how consumer experiences outperform other forms of advertising, especially on digital and mobile. Wong said that we need to be “Making advertising something that people really like again.” But in order to create effective experiences, marketers, agencies and brands need to start understanding “what people actually do on the phone,” Wong added. As a piece of this user experience, Ian Schafer, chief experience officer at Engine USA, a multi-faceted...
Work With Us To Turn Your SMS Campaign Into A Real Mobile Strategy
Even though impressive mobile marketing-related facts are regularly trotted out by the industry such as more people worldwide access the web via mobile browsers compared to desktop, some brands still think mobile is not for them. This is really unfortunate – especially in a mobile crazy, high potential country like the 55 million citizen South Africa. Firstly, let’s clarify what mobile marketing is really all about. According to a recently-released book of the same name, mobile is not a channel like social media, outdoor advertising or search; it is something that impacts all of the other marketing channels. Here at InTarget, we love that description because it clarifies that mobile ties it all together. In today’s hyperconnected world, mobile is the marketing glue that holds all of the consumer’s purchase-related decisions and actions together. While most of us would be familiar with mobile marketing through such obvious mobile tools as SMS, Please Call Me and location-based advertising; mobile is so much more. According to ‘Mobile Marketing’, it includes strategies and tools such as beacons, IM chatbots, virtual reality, mobile search, near-field communications (NFC) and more. Unfortunately, for SMEs and mid-sized owner-run businesses, terms like those listed above can make mobile marketing and advertising seem daunting. Take it from us: mobile is not only for large enterprises. With an experienced mobile specialist like InTarget, the small business owner will be talking the mobile business lingo like a pro in no time and generating the type of tangible business outcomes that make mobile campaigns so essential in challenging times. Speak to us about evaluating your SME’s current mobile marketing practices so...
Personalising Mobile Video The Right Path
InTarget has been evangelising the use of video in mobile marketing campaigns for several years now. We’ve mentioned many times in these pages that adding video to mobile marketing messages boosts customer engagement by around a third. Then came news earlier this year from industry commentators Mobile Marketing Watch that consumers are expected to spend almost 50 minutes a day watching online videos by the end of 2017. Of course, most of them will be using mobile to do so. Now, with the increasing popularity of video comes an emerging threat on the technology horizon. Adding video to the mobile marketing mix might start getting challenging as Google announced last week that the version of Google Chrome which is being released in January next year, will only allow videos to start auto playing that do not have sound. Alternatively, for sound to play, the user should have indicated that they have an interest in the media. To decide whether a user does indeed want audio to play audio or not, Google says it will take into account the number of times the user has visited a certain website and the frequency of media playback on each visit. All of this really just takes us back to the primary reason why mobile marketing is so awesome. It offers a degree a personalisation and segmentation that traditional media platforms can only marvel at. This latest announcement from Google that hints at the smallest potential future threat, simply means mobile marketers need to continue on the same path of ensuring that we carry on developing relevant, personalised messages for consumers who want...
Chatbots, Automation And Self-service Should Be On Your Mobile ‘to Do’ List
Spring has sprung and this much-anticipated annual event on everyone’s calendar means there are now just four months to go until the end of the year. Of course, this also means that there are a mere 120 days left to refine your brand’s approach to mobile marketing, if you haven’t already done so. As we have said before, there really is no need to panic if you haven’t got all your mobile ducks in a row. The past is done. What’s important is to get moving on mobile now. Let’s forget about rehashing such illustrative stats as there are more people accessing the web via mobile than via desktop (that’s been the case globally for at least two years) and 80% of people have their cellphones within a metre of them most of their waking (and sleeping) day. We’ve discussed some mobile marketing plan fundamentals before that would have included such ‘to do list’ items for savvy brand managers as the absolute necessity of building a scaled-down mobile version of your website and the need to investigate location-based campaigns that help you connect with current and potential customers when they’re in your brand’s physical sphere of influence. So, to add to your already lengthy mobile to do list, here are some little-known, up-and-coming mobile must-haves that are worthy of investigation before the end of 2017. Firstly, chatbots are becoming big. Forbes magazines already predicted some time back that, in 2017, more brands will be able to serve consumers using conversational interfaces. Secondly, investigate automation. Sorry we can’t be more specific here, save to say that smart apps are ushering...
Mobile Enables Customer Engagement In Really Cool Ways
Watchwords come and go and two of the latest words we hear often in business lately are ‘customer engagement’. Of course, this might be the catchphrase of the moment but customer engagement really just means you care enough about your clients to reach out to them in ways that matter to them. This is simply good business practice. What else does customer engagement really mean? We like a simple definition provided by the business resource platform, Business2Community.com. According to this sage provider of sensible information, customer engagement is basically “any strategy you implement that will attract your targeted audience”. To InTarget, this screams mobile marketing. If you’re still unsure about the need to optimise your business strategy for mobile, here are two more great reasons your firm needs to get cracking and partner with the right mobile marketing provider: Mobile is where customers are. There’s no way of saying this in any other way: everyone you need to speak to has a cellphone. According to some sources, the average consumer is spending three hours a day on mobile. We think it is much, much higher with South African cellular users checking their mobile handsets at least every few minutes throughout the day. Now, aside from simply checking text message and WhatsApp icons, they’re also increasingly turning to their mobiles to conduct purchasing research and make decisions. Mobile users love emails. We don’t know why, but there’s something fabulous and very nifty about checking emails on a mobile device. A mobile strategy can really help you maximise your firm’s email marketing effort because clever mobile firms have come up with such...
First With Last Year’s Mobile Tips!
As the year has now firmly passed the midway point and we close in on the last few months of 2017, it’s tempting to take another look at the tips mobile marketers were providing as the year got underway. As we review the sage advice of 2016 for 2017, we are reminded that there were the usual favourites that appeared to be cut and pasted from one media platform to the next. Advice like enable opt-in advertising seemed obvious – albeit crucial – and the same was true for such sound advice like optimising campaigns for location-based advertising. This is a great way to get in front of users at the moment they are in your brand’s area of operations. One particular bit of advice caught our eye as we reviewed advice provided to mobile marketers in 2016 about this year. One marketing thinker mentioned how emerging markets can influence mobile strategies in positive ways. The only thing is China, India, Brazil and Russia were the countries highlighted as offering great opportunities for mobile advertising. We can’t argue with the inclusion of at least one of those mobile territories, but at least one or two others are in a terrible state and we wonder if the risk justifies the reward. Perhaps things looked rosier in 2016. It seems bizarre, especially for a successful and growing organisation like InTarget, for any mobile marketing guru to give the entire continent of Africa a miss in a serious discussion of current and future mobile opportunities. And the Middle East for that matter too. How do you sideline a billion people and expect...
Still Time To Optimise For Mobile
We quote so many facts and statistics with foreign origins in this blog that it’s a refreshing and positive change to have some local stats to highlight. The 2017 South African Mobile Report, by PricewaterhouseCooper’s (PwC), reveals that nearly half of the respondents use their mobile phones for two and a half hours per day. That was particularly interesting for me as I read this very morning that a study by UK firm TextLocal found that young mobile users in that country use their phones for an average of five hours a day. With relatively few SA mobile users having work or home access to a desktop or laptop computer, I doubt UK mobile users really do use their phones twice as much as their local counterparts. The difference in the two figures is most possibly due to differences in study methodology. An additional interesting local mobile-related statistic has to do with SA cell users using their mobiles for web access. Fully 40% of respondents said they use their handsets for Internet usage and the latter typically amounts to paying bills and engaging in other types of mobile commerce. If fully 4 out of 10 SA cellphone users are well-versed in m-commerce then doesn’t it make sense for your firm to be well-versed in mobile marketing? Of course it does and InTarget can show you what to do. The first thing your business needs to do to get m-ready is to take steps to optimise your operations for mobile. With mobile, new opportunities arise to communicate with your customers but this means you need to make a commitment to...
Meet The Web Team To Boost Mobile Conversion Rates
Mobile’s the best thing since sliced bread, the wheel and democracy! So the conventional wisdom goes. When one realises that the 40 million mobile user milestone is fast approaching in South Africa, we at InTarget couldn’t agree more. However, why is it then that mobile conversion rates in E-commerce are so low? Some sources have the average rate at which online shoppers eventually actually purchase via their mobile devices at just over half a percent. While it is obvious that the mobile form factor has inherent disadvantages related to size that are not going to go away any time soon, the fact remains that consumers are leaving desktop in droves. So it seems to us that the onus is on the mobile marketer to identify any roadblocks that exist in mobile E-commerce and overcome them with a view to boosting conversion rates. Let’s be mobile optimists and plough on with some practical things we can do with regards to the above. Desktop users have greater freedom to switch between various websites. It’s just way easier on desktop to play around with tabs. Recognising that online buyers tend to check multiple product reviews across different pages before making a purchase, this is a potential issue that needs definite attention from the mobile marketer. We need to impress upon clients that they need to make it a lot easier for mobile users to check product reviews on the brand’s E-commerce platform. Don’t shy away from reviews, encourage them, and don’t let potential buyers exit your platform to read product reviews – they need to stay on the page! Typing in crucial...
Three Must-have Mobile Marketing Practices
We’ve said before that mobile marketing runs on numbers. What also true is that words grease the wheels of business – and specifically, quotes. Businesspeople the world over do seem to love a wise word or two, and especially when it’s delivered in the form of quotable quotes. A particularly quotable quote that I came across this morning while researching the topic of today’s blog is this one that I just love from Entrepreneur Magazine: “If you’re not being smart about reaching your customers via mobile, you’re leaving a ton of money on the table.” Toby Nwazor, a consumer goods marketer, came up with this one. It’s great because it states in no uncertain terms that we’re dealing with money here – real cash that’s being completely thrown away if you’re ignoring mobile marketing. There are three ‘must have’ mobile marketing practices that companies absolutely must adopt if they’re not to go the way of that venerable, 160 year old soon-to-be-extinct retail store, Stuttafords. InTarget can advise on all of these, so while we won’t go into detail here, you’re welcome to discuss them with us in much greater detail over really great coffee: 1. Location-based marketing is truly here. We can help you send notifications to current and potential customers via text and other mobile technologies who live or work within a certain radius of the locations relevant to your brand. 2. In-app marketing offers the most personalised engagement possible with consumers. This drives retention, loyalty and lifetime value. This one is fantastic because you’ve already captured the customer and simply need to deepen the engagement. 3. SMS...
Three On-target Mobile Video Tips From Intarget
Mobile Marketing Watch says we’ll be spending a fairly significant 47 minutes a day watching online videos by the end of 2017. I found this statistic particularly interesting because one would have thought that it would be higher by now. Still, it does go to show what we’ve said many times before on this blog: video is huge, it’s growing, and it’s an area that absolutely demands attention from mobile marketers. The often-quoted statistic is that adding video to mobile marketing messages boosts engagement by customers by upwards of 30%. That alone is a compelling reason to add video to the mobile marketing mix. However, before you rush out there and go wild with the camcorder app, consider this sage advice about video in mobile marketing: Mobile technology has led to a fundamental shift in consumer behaviour that requires businesses to tell an emotional story quickly. The best way to do this is to lead with video because it produces the best conversion and engagement rates. Therefore, video tip number one is to “create to convert”. Video thumbnails, or small details of a video, can make or break your video’s chances of getting clicks. So make sure your video thumbnail attracts people to click on it while also sticking around to watch the entire video. You can use YouTube to improve your video’s SEO. YouTube offers excellent SEO potential, provided you can optimise your video description. To do this, you can insert a link where you want to send your traffic at the top of the description. You can also use target keywords. However, ensure they show up in...
Intarget’s Advice For Encouraging Consumer Buying
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...
Mobile Marketing’s Future Is Bright, Rosy And…. Fast!
Forbes Magazine says it is “difficult to overstate” the importance of mobile marketing. The obvious reason for this is the fact there are a whopping 35 million mobile users in South Africa alone, with another 900 million or so throughout the rest of the continent’s 54 recognised countries. That’s a heck of a market and its becoming more accessible. People can use their cellphones for more than just calling and texting: mobile data prices have declined from about R700 for half a gigabyte of cellular data in 2005 to just over R150 a gigabyte (on Telkom Mobile, for example) today. The wide availability of quality smartphones, new from leading retailers, is also boosting the total audience for mobile campaigns. A lesser-known reason why mobile marketing in South Africa is set for continued stellar growth is the recent limited commercial launch of a brand spanking new nationwide LTE-A wireless network. LTE-Advanced represents a major enhancement of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile communications standard. Owner Multisource has already invited a small number of clients to trial the new LTE-A network and, interestingly, for the local mobile marketing sector, its already public knowledge that Vodacom has concluded an agreement to roam on the new super-fast network. It’s great news that local mobile networks are increasing capacity through smart roaming agreements as companies like InTarget Mobile Advertising work with clients to develop ever more engaging and data-intensive campaigns. All of this is in response to facts like the fact that social media and other posts that include video and images produce 650% more engagement than text-only...
Slow Off The Mark Could Yield Fast Dividends
As we come to the end of June and the halfway point of what just a few months ago still felt like a new year, its natural to wonder what has been accomplished thus far. On the mobile marketing front, we are reminded that our chosen discipline is roughly comprised of two primary segments, so to speak. We have the planning phase and we have implementation. Of course, there’s also the highly-detailed reporting that mobile marketing is famous for. There’s no other area of marketing specialisation where one can drill down into the numbers quite as spectacularly as in mobile – but another time for that! So by this halfway point in the year, brand owners and their agencies should ideally have completed the planning phase involved in executing an effective mobile campaign. I say ‘ideally’ because, as we are about to find out, all is not lost if there’s been no movement whatsoever on the mobile marketing front within your organisation. Being slow off the starting blocks is not a great position to be in, but sometimes it just happens – perhaps there’s been an internal restructuring in this difficult economic climate, perhaps your RFP became a much more lengthy document that you intended. The important thing is that any position can be salvaged. There are some great advantages to only starting the planning phase of a mobile strategy halfway through the year: 1. You get to gather some fantastic market intelligence about what works and what doesn’t, all without having to spend a cent. True, your competitors might have scored big with their early riser mobile campaigns....
Few Marketers Know How To Capitalise On Mobile, Let Us Show You How
As we kick-off a brand new working week, it’s apt that we get right to the point of this brand new installment of our blog: new research by Oracle indicates that despite all the numbers showing that smartphone use is now ubiquitous amongst consumers, the data indicates that few marketers know how to capitalise on this new consumer reality. Essentially, marketers have been unable to clear away the fog of hype to be able to make the appropriate investments in mobile marketing. However, the same cannot be said of marketers who partner with mobile advertising and marketing specialists like InTarget. A specialist is always better than a generalist and we have almost two decades experience of conceptualising, building and implementing effective mobile campaigns. So what is it we actually do, you may ask, to capitalise on the continent’s growing mobile base? We serve two billion mobile ads mentioning our clients’ brands every month! InTarget’s flagship mobile marketing product, so to speak, is the ‘Please Call Me’ series of text tag ads and is responsible for the lion’s share of ads served. Related to this, InTarget is a well-known designer of mobile campaigns centered on mobile network operator (MNO) System Messaging alerts. System Messaging includes network notifications such as Please Call Me, Missed Call Alert and Sponsored Calls. We love centering campaigns around these because the consumer receives loads of them, and doesn’t view them as intrusive because they simultaneously convey useful network information. More information on our specific client services are available on this website. However, we’d like to add in closing that it is vitally important for marketers...