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Are you in a shopping mall right now? Why don’t you switch on the Bluetooth facility in your mobile phone and check out for some hot offers? No, I’m not kidding. Remember I talked about “location specific mobile advertising?” The Bluetooth facility in mobile phones has become a convenient way for merchant outlets and marketers to send location-specific messages, advertisements, and offers.
Next time you enter Hard Rock Café, you might get a message about the day’s serves and special discounts on your favorite latte via Bluetooth. Analysts say that this form of marketing could work better than other conventional forms because it offers something for the customer instantly without having to go anywhere. It’s easy to understand. Imagine this - I go to my favorite bookstore and I get a message stating that there is a 25% discount on my favorite bestseller. Why would I want to miss it out? With this kind of marketing, the offer can be made use of by the consumer immediately and this makes this campaign a very successful one.
The interactive nature of Bluetooth technology also gives advertisers and marketers a lot of chances to experiment with different methods of marketing. For example, advertisers may conduct a poll or quiz and make you participate in that. They can also offer on-the-spot prizes for the winners. All this could take only a few minutes and so a majority of mobile users might want to give it a try, which is what the mobile advertisers want.
Tags: Bluetooth, location specific mobile advertising, Mobile advertisers, mobile advertising, mobile phone
Technorati Tags: Bluetooth, location specific mobile advertising, Mobile advertisers, mobile advertising, mobile phone
Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.
One of my friends recently raised a concern over all the brouhaha happening over mobile phone advertising. Especially, the fact that GPS enabled phones could be the next target of mobile advertisers in order to cater to the customers with location-specific ads has very much disturbed him. “Location-specific ads are not as easy as you think they are,” he said. “Just because I happen to stand next to a sex shop for some reason, I don’t want to get a text message asking me to use the facilities of the shop at a discounted rate,” he also added. Most importantly, he was not happy that his boss would be able to find him out wherever he goes. Another thing he mentioned was about the safety of the data collected. With incidents like HP Pretexting happening around us, it seems like a very valid point to me.
Actually, the way I look at it, it’s not just my friend who has these apprehensions about location-specific mobile phone advertising. A lot of people would second my friend’s opinion and I don’t find any fault with them. Before a product or service becomes famous, apprehensions like this are bound to surface and the responsibility of the mobile marketers is to make sure the customers know what they are getting into. A full fledged mobile advertising campaign to clarify these doubts could be a solution. But not every mobile marketer would be willing to come up with this sort of an idea. End of the day, we, the customers, need to know whether our data will remain safe, to what extent these location-specific ads can go, and so on and so forth.
My take on this issue remains the same. Annoying the customer with unsolicited or irrelevant ads is the last thing these mobile marketers would do. The reason is pretty obvious. The customer has the choice to switch over to some other carrier if he doesn’t like the services of a carrier. Similarly, he also has the choice to opt out of the mobile advertising service any time he wants. So, it takes just one bad move from the mobile marketers’ side to push the customers too far. So, they would be very careful not to intrude into your private space – without your permission, at least. :)
Tags: GPS, location specific mobile advertising, mobile marketers, mobile phone advertising
Technorati Tags: GPS, location specific mobile advertising, mobile marketers, mobile phone advertising
Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.
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