by anton | Oct 30, 2017 |
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...
by anton | Oct 23, 2017 |
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...
by anton | Oct 20, 2017 |
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...
by Marius du Plessis | Oct 18, 2017 |
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...
by Henk Auret | Sep 29, 2017 |
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...
by anton | Sep 21, 2017 |
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...
