by anton | May 23, 2016 |
Many of us were raised with the view that one doesn’t talk about money – ever. Unfortunately, this attitude is preventing some mobile marketers from doing what they should be doing. That’s cutting to the chase and asking current and potential customers for their orders. The placement of an actual order for our clients’ goods and services should be the primary goal of every mobile marketing campaign. Now while that seems pretty obvious, sometimes it isn’t because many mobile marketers have a long history in traditional media. This is where huge budgets and a lack of accountability brought on by poor return on investment (ROI) tools mean very often all that’s going on is so-called “brand building”. Translation: ‘brand building’ refers to those over the top TV ads where a voice with an accent you can’t place is reading a never-ending script you can’t stand. Only after the longest 45 seconds does the brand make an appearance, as does the flimsiest of links between the company and whatever cringeworthy life’s lesson was being narrated by the bearded wonder. Perhaps if there was a short code or a QR code displayed beneath the brand identity, all of the above would have been worth it. Mobile marketers are ‘back to basics’ kind of people and we understand that clients really should be moving product when they’re embarking on any kind of marketing campaign. This is why InTarget tells its clients that there is nothing wrong with inserting a bit of hard selling in mobile campaigns. It has to be that way, or else all of the wonderful reporting tools that are...
by anton | Jul 22, 2015 |
I don’t think it would be out of place to write that ever since our ancestors discovered that logs could be made into seats – and a circle of cavemen could then be called a meeting – we have equated meetings to work. This is why for many years competitive types would settle down at their favourite pubs and hold after-hour meetings where they would all inform each other about how many meetings they had attended that day. This was a way of illustrating to their friends just how hard working they had been. Enter the advent of ubiquitous email access in corporate South Africa, and suddenly hard work is not defined in meeting hours anymore, it’s about how many emails you sent and received during a particular working day. A friend of mine recently told me he sent and received over 120 emails in one day, followed by perhaps a dozen text messages, and in last position, he said he received perhaps ‘one or two’ phone calls. ‘One or two?’ I thought, ‘That’s an opportunity!’ It seems to me that communication has become more text-based than at any other time in history. With people having to work their way through thousands of lines of text-based emails a day, marketers have a fantastic opportunity to be heard – quite literally – via InTarget’s voice-based mobile advertising service. These days, when the phone rings, people take notice because it has become so unexpected for so many of us. And that’s especially true of the younger generation who barely make a phone call today. We’d love to hear from you (forgive...
by anton | Apr 15, 2015 |
Marketers often make the mistake of thinking that they should stick to one communication/ marketing channel alone, when in fact a combo of channels provides better result. One such an effective partnership is Mobile Advertising and electronic mail. Brands have been using email for anything from direct advertisements to newsletters and various forms of customer service. The biggest advantage of email is the fact that you have no limitations when it comes to content – unlike a SMS that can only take 160 characters. Even though email might not be as popular today as it was a decade or so ago, there are still certain situations where an email message is more fitting than a phone call or even a text. But, no communication channel should exist in a silo, especially not if you want to grow your customer base. Getting customers to sign up It doesn’t matter if you want customers to opt-in to your mobile contact list or subscribe to your eNewsletter – you can cross your channels to achieve both. Use Mobile Advertising to send customers a link to a subscription form for your newsletter on your website. Or, send them a text containing a SMS Shortcode and keyword they can use to instantly submit their email address. When it is time to gather mobile numbers, send customers an email containing instructions for opting in to your mobile list. Getting people to give their phone number away is much harder than obtaining their email address. The reason for this is simply because mobile phones are much more personal to consumers. Unwanted emails are after all much...
