Forget interactive video, mobile bar-code scanning phones and music-recognition programs. When it comes to mobile marketing, it’s still all about text messaging.
The coming wave of high-tech mobile applications has marketers salivating, to be sure. But if you’re looking to get your product or service in front of mobile-phone users, advertisers say SMS is still the way to go.
In the last year, interactive text-messaging campaigns have popped up at concerts, sporting events and singles bars. Vibes Media, a mobile marketing group based outside of Chicago, ran a project earlier this year that asked fans at a White Sox game to name the team’s most attractive player.
People who replied were sent invitations to a trivia contest, and each correct answer gave them a better chance of winning sky-box seats for an upcoming game. The campaign generated an average of 44 messages per participant, according to Alex Campbell, the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer.
“We try to get a dialogue going with the customers,” said Campbell. “For us, that’s what it’s all about.”
And it’s not just the inherent interactive qualities of a cell phone that Vibes finds attractive. Unlike other media, phones allow users to interact at their convenience, over the course of hours, days or even weeks.
“There are advertising programs out nowadays that say, `Vote for this or that,’ and that’s it,” Campbell said. “We see that as a big missed opportunity to market to people, and at their own speed.”
Others see mobile phones as a way to integrate several types of media in a marketing campaign. In Florida, some real estate “for sale” signs soon will include short codes that prospective buyers can send messages to in order to receive information on a property.
Billboards, TV commercials and other ads are beginning to promote short codes for mobile users to learn more about a product or service. The process also can work in reverse, as vendors use mobile phones to get viewers to tune in to specific TV programs.
“We’ll send previews of music clips and show clips throughout the day (on mobile phones), making sure (users) are in front of their TVs at 8,” said Steinar Svalesen, executive vice president and general manager of Mobile Media North America. “We’re doing a lot of that in Scandinavia right now.”
Steinar said the company probably will start offering similar campaigns in the United States early next year.
Another popular application: Text-to-screen campaigns that encourage users to send messages that are displayed on screens before concerts or in nightclubs.
Marketing company Swagger Wireless claimed a campaign with hip-hop tour “Jay-Z and Friends” yielded more than 100,000 messages during the show’s 40-stop tour. Not only do such projects generate SMS revenues-each text message in the Jay-Z campaign costs $1 to send-they also keep fans’ eyes riveted on screens touting advertisers.
Maxim, a men’s magazine, and Budweiser teamed on similar text-to-screen campaigns at nightclubs.
“That’s one of our more popular applications,” said Campbell. “When you send messages to a screen, you’re going to stare at that screen until your message comes up … It allows the venue or sponsor to sell that space for a lot more money because they know people are looking at it.”
But just as mobile phones offer unique marketing opportunities, targeting users through their phones can be dangerous. Even consumers who “opt in for advertising information can perceive such messages as spam when it pops up on their handsets.
Campbell said he learned that lesson the hard way when Vibes sent informational alerts to users interested in Illinois Lottery information. Even though the consumers signed up for the service, they didn’t appreciate the alerts on their phones.
“We instantly started getting complaints from people saying, `Stop spamming my phone,”‘ Campbell said. “We found there was such a backlash on the spam front that alerts were not worth getting into.”
Svalesen agreed, noting that his company requires users to opt-in twice before receiving alerts or other information. Still, he said, the key to using mobile phones as marketing channels is by integrating them with such established advertising avenues as television, radio and billboards.
“We believe in cross-channel promotion,” Svalesen said. “If you just do this as a mobile campaign, you don’t really have the effectiveness compared to if you combine it with more traditional media.”
