Mobile Marketing is Gearing Up

Marketing to consumers’ cellphones has long been viewed as something of a holy grail by businesses – prized but always beyond reach. Recently however, new mobile technologies have gone mainstream, making the elusive goal of an always-on connection with customers firmly within reach of even the smallest business. Consider that:

* There are four times the number of cellphones in the world versus PCs (4Bn vs.
1Bn) and 20% of all U.S. households are now “mobile-only”
* Over 130 Billion texts are sent each month, up from practically nothing in 2000
* Gen Yers (18-29) say their phone is the most
important device they own
* According to multiple analysts, Mobile Marketing and Advertising will explode from just a couple hundred million dollars in revenues in 2008 to $3 – 5 billion by 2012.

Here are a few tips to consider as we move into 2011:

# Think of text message marketing as you do email marketing, except instead of collecting an email address you collect a mobile phone number. Like email marketing, you create campaigns at a website and only send them to customers who have opted-in to receive your message.

# But unlike email, you don’t need fancy graphics, just up to 160 characters of plain ‘ol text. So even the most non-technical and non-marketing savvy small business owner can pick it up in just a couple of minutes. Your customers will instantly read your message 97% of the time.

# Acceptance of mobile coupons – A recession-weary public hungering for discounts is latching on to mobile coupons as the ‘killer mobile app’ due to their convenience. More consumer-packaged goods companies, restaurants, and grocers are launching mobile coupons each month.

# Proven ROI – Texting is proving its chops versus email and social media. On average, texting gets seven times the response rate versus email (7% vs 1%) and reaches twenty five times the number of users as does Twitter.

# Big Box retailers and fast food retailers have built mobile sites and Iphone apps that have allowed consumers to order products, rate services, send gifts, send wake up calls to friends and send a slew of other services once only available on line

Look in 2011 for these pioneers to keep blazing trails with:

# Bar Coded Coupons – 200 7-Eleven stores in San Diego are testing scannable bar codes on consumers’ phones to get up to one free drink per day. Indeed, in the next two years Juniper Research projects three billion mobile coupons will be issued to phones.

# Pay by phone – Starbucks is testing Starbucks Card Mobile, which allows customers to pay for coffee in the shop with their phone. Initial tests saw a 60% redemption rate of the coupon component.

# Integration with real-time data – Ace Hardware is combining weather forecasts with text alerts to hawk more shovels.

As bowling proprietors, shouldn't we be looking to utilize these types of tools as well?

Hey Mr BPAA, can you give us a hand here, please? Thank You