Mobile advertising through text messages is the most focused and relevant

Advertisers, after targeting the television and internet medium, are now hoping to cash in on the mobile revolution. The planners have realised that personalised, permissive and contextual advertising is the right strategy to reach out to the target audience and guarantee a better return on investment.

“We have always recognised the opportunity that exists in the field of mobile advertising. We have full-fledged teams for that. Nokia had a separate company by the name of enpocket, which dealt with mobile advertising. The company is now a part of the Nokia group. We are well-placed to leverage this medium.” said Devinder Kishore, marketing director, Nokia India.

At the moment, most mobile advertising takes the form of text messages. But telecoms firms are also beginning to deliver ads to handsets in addition to video clips, web pages, music and game downloads, through mobiles, which enable such features. With big players entering this domain, the market is set to create more buzz.

Google is betting big on mobile advertising. “Mobile advertising holds lot of potential in India because of its large customer base. We have seen lots of success around the world in providing our type of advertising on a mobile device. India today has more than 260 million cellular subscribers and rapidly increasing telecom density.” says Shailesh Rao, managing director, Google India.

Advertisers say that about half of all traditional advertising does not reach the right audience. But mobile advertising through text messages is the most focused and relevant.

Marketers can use a mobile firm’s customer profile and tailor their ads to match each subscriber’s spending habits. The focus eliminates wasteful expenditure and the end result is more relevant and targeted advertising.

Lloyd Mathias, marketing director, Motorola, agrees, “You can give the consumer the ad that will specifically interest them. It is a one-on-one medium and I can reach you anywhere you are. All the phones that we make at Motorola are very well equipped to support mobile advertising.”

SMS History

SMS was created during the late 1980s to work with a digital technology called GSM (global system for mobile communications), which is the basis for most modern cell phones. The Norwegian engineers who invented it wanted a very simple messaging system that worked when users’ mobile phones were turned off or out of signal range. Most sources agree that the first SMS message was sent in the UK in 1992.
As SMS was born in Europe, it’s not surprising that it took a little longer to make its way to the United States. Even today, texting enjoys much greater popularity in Europe, though its stateside use is on the rise. A July 2005 study found that 37 percent of U.S. mobile phone owners had sent or received at least one text message in the previous month

Text-to-Screen Campaign in 10 Simple Steps

1. Hire a mobile vendor such as GZAM
2. GZAM will provide you with a short code and its platform that lets you track incoming messages, filter them, and approve them for the screen.
3. Craft a mobile marketing strategy to advertise your campaign. Be clear about your goals, audience, messaging, and integration with other media.
4. Ensure that your constituency is available and ready for action.
5. Determine your PR and earned media strategy.
6. Set up your web site and test it.
7. Set up the screen and make sure that the feed is functional.
8. On campaign day, use the mobile platform provided by the vendor to publish the text messages to a screen.
9. After the campaign, follow up with users who texted in and engage them in a thoughtful ladder of interaction. One of the advantages of a text-to-screen campaign is that it builds your database of mobile phone users. Now that you have all these mobile phone numbers, how will you use them in the future? You could consider sending each user a message thanking them for participating and asking if they want to be notified of other campaigns or receive SMS notifications. You can also ask people to text in their email address in order to continue with web-based follow-up or fundraising.
10. Evaluate the campaign. How many people texted in? Was most participation from local numbers or from people who saw the live feed on the Internet? Were there technical problems that could have easily been resolved? How could you make a text to screen campaign more successful in the future?