It is easy to get caught up in the excitement of new technologies, and since the advent of the smartphone there have been plenty of new devices to get excited about. New technologies offer marketers the opportunity to create wow-factor campaigns and gain industry-firsts, and while this is fantastic it is important to keep your overall strategy at the heart of your planning; yes you could create an amazing one-off campaign incorporating new technologies but does it meet your ultimate objectives and drive the brand forwards?
This doesn’t mean that new technologies should be dismissed, clearly mobile tablets and smartphones are here to stay and it’s important that they are incorporated into any holistic media plan. What mobile does offer is the opportunity to get your brand directly into your consumer’s pockets.
Mobile is more personable than any other channel and it is an opt-in medium, which means that consumers are already open to hearing from your brand. What marketers do need to deliver though is something for the consumer to engage with. Recent figures from Ofcom show that 45 per cent of the country’s internet-using population have used their mobile devices to access the internet in the past year, a figure that rises to 71 per cent in the 16-24 year old age group.
These consumers are internet-savvy so in order to engage them with your brand you must offer added value, and there are some interesting developments in the mobile advertising market at the moment that brands can utilise:
Near-field communications
Near-field communications (NFC) uses location-based technology to push offers through to consumers in area. For example you may receive a money-off voucher for Starbucks as you walk past one of their locations. NFC can be a hugely effective way of encouraging brand loyalty and repeat custom.
SMS Advertising
62 per cent of people read text messages from people they don’t know within one hour, which makes SMS marketing an incredibly powerful tool to start engaging one-to-one with consumers. SMS advertising is often over-looked in favour of more ‘impressive’ mobile tactics, but the return on investment is hard to ignore and SMS can be a hugely effective marketing tool.
Social Media
Many brands already have a significant presence on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and the social web is growing ever bigger. The next big development will be in mobile. Consumers are already spending a huge proportion of time accessing their social networks via their mobiles and soon the social web and mobile web will merge. There is a huge opportunity here for marketers and advertisers to engage with consumers. Social commerce is already taking off and the next step for this will be to move into mobile.
Like social, mobile requires a reality check. Dotted around our office are entertaining stolen internet thoughts that consumers don’t have about marketing, amongst them: ‘if only my favourite brand of toilet paper had a twitter feed I could follow’.
There is no doubt that mobile devices have changed the way marketers approach their brand strategy, because they have fundamentally changed the way consumers interact with the internet. It is crucial that marketers and advertisers build mobile into their marketing strategy but equally as important is to ensure that you don’t get caught up in chasing that wow factor. Mobile advertising can add real value to any campaign as long as it is integrated with and complemented by all your other marketing activity.
