by anton | Aug 28, 2017 |
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...
by anton | Jun 30, 2017 |
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...
by anton | May 22, 2017 |
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...
by anton | May 22, 2017 |
It occurred to me that so much of what mobile marketers says is directed to other marketers. Whether it’s presenting at the annual mix of industry conferences, or writing on business-related blogs, often the mobile marketer’s audience is other mobile marketers. It is with this thought in mind that today’s blog topic is aimed squarely at the mobile marketer’s raison d’être: our clients. Most clients new to mobile marketing tend to equate mobile campaigns with SMS and that’s perfectly acceptable. The text message was the original mobile marketing tactical instrument and with SMS coupon redemption rates as high as 30% to 50%, it remains a vital part of any mobile marketer’s arsenal. So clients are familiar with SMS, and no doubt it’s cousin the wildly-popular Please Call Me text tag ad, but what else do they need to know about mobile? Possibly the most important thing clients need to know about mobile is that it’s not the future, it’s already arrived! If brand managers and owners haven’t already embarked on a mobile strategy, they’re already trailing behind the competition. The mere fact that the number of people accessing the web via mobile devices overtook people accessing the web via desktop many months ago, means clients need to get serious about mobile. The world’s changing fast and you risk being responsible for your company’s demise within the next 24 months if you don’t get with mobile within the next 24 hours. The next thing clients need to know – and this one may seem obvious – is that mobile is not just about marketing on a cellphone. Other mobile devices...
by anton | Apr 18, 2017 |
Recent media coverage suggests that things are not that rosy in our neck of the woods. Challenges there may be, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the many advantages of living in South Africa. So many things work well with the homegrown mobile industry being an excellent example of something world class that we get to enjoy every day. News that the telecoms watchdog in Ireland has received so many consumer complaints that a formal review of the sector is being planned had me thinking about how fortunate are as local cellular users. Apparently, the quality of mobile phone handsets being sold in Ireland is less than satisfactory in many instances. In addition, a country many times smaller than South Africa suffers from patchy cellular coverage that results in dropped calls, weak signals and slow data speeds. Of course, things are not always as clear-cut as they seem. A major reason Irish cellular users are suffering from slow data speeds, apparently, is in fact related to something positive. It’s because video streaming is becoming so huge in developed mobile markets. We’ve mentioned the growing importance of video in mobile marketing several times in this blog. It’s clear that we’ve been on the right track because what happens in overseas mobile markets is sure to make an appearance locally very soon. It’s gone the other way, as well, with prepaid being the best example of a local trend that originated here first. It’s great news that local mobile networks are constantly increasing capacity as companies like InTarget Mobile Advertising work with clients to develop ever more engaging and data-intensive campaigns....
