by Marius du Plessis | Jun 11, 2016 |
Some readers of this blog would have seen the series of fairly new Telkom television adverts. It basically shows a bunch of young people being amazed by the lack of technological savvy displayed by some older people when it comes to online awareness. The kids all laugh when an old guy asks “don’t you go to the mall anymore?”. The implication is that your future customers are all shopping online. The company’s use of the medium of television is ironic, of course, but that fact clearly escaped their marketing department. The Telkom ads are pretty good, I must say. They’re rare entertaining gems in a very predictable TV ad world. However, one wonders whether the conclusion is a bit overdone – are all the kids really not going to the mall anymore? Of course they are. A visit to any mall around South Africa will reveal an assortment of top-end hoodies and entry-level cellphones en masse. What’s interesting is that in many cases what got the kids to the mall with its brick and mortar retailers is mobile marketing – proving, once again, that traditional marketing and mobile marketing really do complement each other very nicely. Brands should worry less about the split between traditional and mobile and focus instead of their overall bottom lines. What got me thinking about all of this was an article this week about a very clued-up someone called Mary Meeker from a certain venture capital fund called Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. She had conducted an ‘exhaustive study’ on Internet trends and presented the findings at a conference in Silicon Valley – findings...
by Marius du Plessis | May 24, 2016 |
Marketing in general, and mobile marketing in particular, runs on statistics. The fact that firms like InTarget can accurately measure such indices are clickthrough rates, average cost per user and others means that numbers feature prominently in mobile campaigns. Many of us here at InTarget can quote the usual mobile marketing-related numbers with ease. For example, over 90 percent of adults keep their smartphones within reach and almost half of millennials check their phones within five minutes of waking. Stats like these have become such accepted wisdom that they’re often quoted and never credited. A brand new statistic that caught my eye this past week is from Opera Mediaworks’ new report. Looking at data from the top 100 apps that use Opera’s mobile ad platform to monetise their traffic, it’s clear that mobile users are spending about 30 minutes each in popular apps. That’s really significant and especially good news for mobile marketers as this research seems to indicate that brands have got as long as half an hour to make an impression. Other highlights from the research includes the fact that Games is the top category for ad impressions and also have long average session times. Ads also convert at a higher rate on Games apps than any other category. Music, Video & Media is no. 1 for engagement (as measured by clickthrough rate), followed by Travel and Lifestyle. finally, although the volume of impressions on mobile apps versus the mobile web are comparable, apps generate more than twice the engagement and 13.5X times the revenue. Food for thought indeed and definitely stats to be bourn in mind...
by Marius du Plessis | May 3, 2016 |
News this week is that the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is, for the first time ever, attempting to ascertain the state of mobile marketing in South Africa and the rest of the EMEA region. Assisted by the MMA’s South African Local Council, the survey results will serve as a snapshot of the market right now, as well as help assess future growth prospects. For an industry that continues to hammer home the importance of a plan, or blueprint, before you embark on anything, it’s great news that the MMA’s SA Local Council is staying true to the fundamentals of mobile marketing. The South African market is a key mobile player – especially if one looks at volume metrics – and certainly deserves to be analysed, and recognised. After all, we practically invented prepaid mobile, refined mobile money, and developed such landmark products as Please Call Me that have found great acceptance North of the Limpopo. Our leading mobile network operators and top mobile marketing firms like InTarget have all expanded well beyond South Africa. Yes, it’s time indeed that our market was surveyed. Only time will tell what the results of the MMA’s survey will reveal. However, as one of the founders of mobile marketing in this country, InTarget can make some pretty informed guesses. We believe the survey results will show that mobile is trusted by more South African consumers than any other marketing medium. This is due to the highly personalised nature of mobile campaigns that speak directly to individual consumers and do not employ a ‘one size fits all’ approach. It will furthermore be shown that...
by Marius du Plessis | Apr 15, 2016 |
VentureBeat.com reports an unfortunate fact that many mobile marketing industry professionals already know: mobile marketing is tacked on at the end of marketing campaigns and it is completely siloed. Even though the customer is now completely mobile (weren’t we at over 130 percent mobile penetration about two years ago?), marketing to these highly-accessible potential clients still seems to be an afterthought. InTarget often encounters situations where internal talent to take advantage of the world’s fastest growing marketing channel is either woefully inadequate, or horribly underfunded. This reminds me of the days when the IT department was relegated to the basement and had to contend with overhead pipes and underfoot obstacles while wrestling with their daily tasks. That mobile is often tacked onto the end of marketing plans without much thought, is clear from that fact that the internal mobile marketing team usually receives completely different creative elements. We’ve seen real disconnects in how the people managing the organisation’s email marketing efforts and website are expected to work when compared to the mobile marketing team – and then we still have the traditional media guys on top of that who tend to gobble up most of the time, resources and attention. With so many cellular users who are also your current and potential customers, it really should be the other way around. It will be – partner with a dedicated external mobile marketing consultancy like InTarget and we’ll make mobile work for you, and give it the proper attention it...
by Marius du Plessis | Apr 1, 2016 |
The discipline of mobile marketing is littered with all manner of impressive statistics. From numbers that say the average mobile user never has their cellphone more than a few metres away from them, to metrics that prove mobile is the most pervasive of all the marketing mediums, numbers make the world of mobile marketing turn. This is probably due in large part to the fact that mobile marketing firms like InTarget are able to provide clients with such rich reporting on mobile campaigns that reliable numbers are never more than mere clicks away. With all this focus on stats, it’s easy to forget the flip-side of quantitative analysis. Words, of course, are quantitative descriptors of the effectiveness of mobile marketing. People who count (forgive the pun) are using some pretty impressive words to describe what mobile can achieve for brands in 2016. Let’s see what they’ve been saying this year… It’s probably apt to start with a “words” quote that speaks to the importance of numbers in mobile marketing. According to one Paul Rouke: “Data scientist will become one of the hottest and in-demand roles – although the vast majority of people relabelling themselves as one will be years away from having the experience and knowledge to warrant such a title.” According to marketing consultant, Andy Betts: “Producing content for content’s sake is a 2015 tactic that will become more redundant in 2016. Last year’s comfort metrics, such as shares and likes, will be re-placed in 2016 with more meaningful measures such as engagement, reach and audience.” We love this one because every consumer has witnessed brands cranking out...
