Ford’s innovative mobile marketing campaign in India

Okay folks, let me ask you a question.

You’re a billion dollar automobile company, you’ve just released a new, peppy edition of your car which appeals mostly to youngsters, and you want to grab the attention of young car enthusiasts all over the country. What do you do?

Simple. You do mobile marketing.

Ford did the exact same thing in India when it released its new Ford Ikon Music Edition car called the iKool. Ford used the services of MindShare, a mobile marketing company, to come up with a creative mobile marketing campaign for iKool. MindShare contacted Nokia and made an agreement to advertise on Airtel Live!, the WAP site of India’s leading mobile operator, Airtel. Airtel is part of Nokia Media Network and it readily agreed to this arrangement.

MindShare created an innovative, content rich WAP site for Ford iKool. Mobile users around the country were served with banner ads through Airtel Live!. Those who clicked on the banner ads were taken to the iKool WAP site where they had the chance to download mobile games, wallpapers, ringtones, and many more.

The response rate for this mobile marketing campaign was a terrific 8.58%. Especially, two content pages – “Services For You” and “News & Sports” – saw a phenomenal click through rate of 14%, which is unseen before.

Ford has actually set an important precedent, as far as I’m concerned. I still remember, when Ford came up with its new model called Fiesta in India about a year and a half back, it mostly relied on TV ads and newspaper and magazine coverage. Now, just within a couple of years, things have changed so much that it went straight to a mobile marketing company to get the job done. And the result was there for everyone to see, right?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

0 comments.

Some good news for mobile marketers

Finally, here’s some good news for mobile marketers. Access 360 Media’s latest report says brings up a few points which I think will be very reassuring for mobile marketers.

1. Once people subscribe to text message alerts from marketers, they stick to it. The number of people who unsubscribe after getting alerts for some time is very less. In fact, it is only around 4%.

2. The response for mobile marketing campaigns has been very high. On an average, 2 to 4 percent of mobile users click on the ads they get to know get more information. This is way better than the response rate from online ads, which is somewhere around 0.01%.

In my opinion, these two facts prove a point. The one which I’ve been telling again and again and again in this blog. Get your customer’s permission, send useful, relevant ads, and give them the choice to opt out of it any time they want. Rest assured, your mobile marketing campaign will be a success.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

0 comments.

Basics of mobile marketing

The New Media Institute recently released a report on mobile marketing which had some interesting facts and very good points.

The report says that a lot of major brands in the US are into mobile marketing and their success rate has been very good so far. It also says that when done the right way, mobile marketing can get you very good results which will be way better than the results that you get from traditional advertising methods. One of the main reasons why all these big brands choose mobile marketing is the ability to connect to people. Mobile marketing can help you target your customer segment accurately – something that traditional advertising methods often fail at.

The report also states three important things about mobile marketing.

First, you need to offer something to people in order to make them join your mobile community. You need to convince them that there is a benefit in joining your community. You can do this by offering free products, discount coupons, special access to exclusive content, and so on.

Second, you need to make sure you respect their privacy. You need to contact them only when they want you to, not whenever you want to.

Third, relevancy of your campaign. You should get to know about people’s preferences and target your mobile marketing campaign accordingly. You cannot send an ad on KFC to a PETA activist. So, you need to make sure you send relevant ads in order to get response from the other end.

Well; I think that pretty much sums up everything. Mobile marketing campaign, when done the right way, can be the magic bullet big brands are looking for.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

0 comments.