Voice Keywords from Go800 - A Mobile-Centric Approach to Direct Response Marketing

Go800, a subsidiary of mobile media services and solutions provider GoIP, has launched an innovative, patent-pending mobile direct response service called Voice Keywords. This service intends to bring vendors and their target customers closer and make the process of direct response marketing simpler.

Voice Keywords is basically a text-to-action version of direct response marketing. Vendors can use certain keywords related to their business in their ads and customers can respond to those ads by texting the keyword to Go800. When they do, a representative from the vendors’ response team immediately gets in touch with them and offers more information about the product.

For example, a mortgage lender can lease the keyword ‘mortgage’ and use it in his marketing campaign. Customers, on seeing the ad, can simply text the word ‘mortgage’ to 46800 (Go800). Immediately, Go800 will call the customers on their mobile phone and connect them to a representative of the mortgage lender. All this happens within a few seconds.

Vendors can lease keywords that they want to use in their marketing campaigns. Go800 says that a lot of keywords, both generic and brand-specific, have been already taken by a number of advertising agencies and businesses.

I think it is a good idea which could become popular with vendors if pitched the right way. There are two reasons why I think this idea will click.

1. It makes it easier for a potential customer to respond to an advert. As a vendor, you cannot expect someone to see your ad, call the toll free number, wait patiently to get in touch with your representative, and get the information. It takes time, which could make some people lose their interest halfway. With Voice Keywords, all a customer needs to do is text a keyword to get a call from a representative instantly.

2. A lot of people do not have smartphones or high end phones with mobile web facility. They will not be able to visit your website immediately and get the information they want. Text messaging, on the other hand, is a facility that is available in almost all types of mobile phones. So, a potential customer can easily text a keyword and get the information he wants in a matter of few seconds.

Go800 plans to make it a global service and is currently building case studies to show potential vendors how they can benefit from such a service.

The idea of a company calling back a customer is certainly new for a lot of people in the industry. So, it might be difficult to convince them to come out of the ‘customer-calling-toll-free-number’ mindset and give this new idea a try. I, however, strongly feel that new ideas like this will become popular in the near future as businesses start looking for ways to become more and more customer friendly.

Categories: All things mobile phones.

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Indian Mobile Advertising Market on a Roll

We have seen a lot of reports about India being a very dominant player in the mobile advertising market, right? Here is one more report to add to that long list. Limbo, a California based mobile social networking company, and GfK Technology, a Germany based market research company, have come up with a joint report which brings up some important points about mobile advertising in India.

The report says that eight in ten mobile phone users in India get ads on their mobile phone which is unprecedented to say the least. The numbers we are talking are huge – there are 300 million mobile users in India now and, on an average, there are 100 million new mobile connections added every year. In this scenario, mobile ads could have a tremendous reach in both urban and rural areas.

The report also says that text messaging or SMS (short messaging service) is the most sought after format of mobile advertising. Around 75% of the ads delivered in India are text based.

Mobile internet or mobile web is not as popular as one would imagine in India as data plans are quite costly. But the report predicts that the rates will come down significantly due to three reasons.

1. A lot of youngsters are interested in mobile web. Considering the fact that more than 500 million people in India are yet to celebrate their 20th birthday, this is a huge market.

2. The quality of mobile web browsing has increased tremendously thanks to high end phones like Apple iPhone. So, the number of people who use the feature will go up steadily.

3. Most importantly, mobile web, as predicted by experts around the world, is the future of mobile advertising. So, mobile advertisers will find a way to reach their target customers through mobile web. What this means to the end user is that he could get a lot of free, ad sponsored multimedia content.

At the end of the day, all this data leaves us with a question – is the future of mobile phone advertising heading east?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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Pepsi and MyClick launch digital campaign

Pepsi has launched a mobile marketing campaign in connection with the upcoming Beijing Olympics. Pepsi has joined hands with MyClick, a famous snap-and-click marketer, to launch this campaign which targets 12-24-year-olds.

In this campaign, customers are invited to upload their birth date, phone number, nickname, and their photo on any one of the six web portals available in China. Three lucky winners, who will be chosen at random, will have a chance to be featured on special edition Pepsi cans during the summer Olympics.

The winners of this contest will be chosen by fans who can vote for their favorites. They need to download MyClick application on the web portal in order to be able to access everything from voting to status updates.

Pepsi Cola is planning to promote this campaign called ‘Creative Challenge’ big time via TV advertising, internet advertising, MMS, text messaging, point-of-sale promotions in retail outlets, and mobile WAP sites. A huge majority of people in China use their mobile phone as the primary device for interaction and this has given Pepsi tremendous confidence to go ahead and launch this campaign.

These kinds of mobile based contests have become huge successes in the past (read American Idol and other such shows) and I have no doubt that this will become hugely popular too, given the kind of promotion Pepsi is planning to do.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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Blyk to offer free mobile browsing?

Blyk is one of the few well known names in the world of mobile advertising. Especially, the way it has targeted the 16-24 age group for mobile ads is considered very good by a lot of people. In a recent insight discussion group with members, Blyk discussed a lot of issues. The most talked about issue, as you would have guessed from the title of this post, was free mobile browsing.

Blyk does this insight discussion group thing often enough to understand the needs of their core market and to adapt themselves to the evolving mobile advertising market.

In this recent discussion, one of the major gripes was the youth’s need for a shortcut to information. As of now, text messaging (SMS) and MMS are the most sought-after ways to reach out to teenagers. Young people are swift in responding to such ads and the success rate has been pretty good so far. But the catch is mobile internet / mobile browsing. If they click on a link which takes them to a mobile site, they have problems viewing it because of two reasons.

1) Mobile browsing costs are way too high and young people, at least most of them, don’t have a regular income, which makes them reluctant to click on the links sent by advertisers.

2) A lot of them don’t have high-end mobile phones which offer rich browsing experience. So, browsing in general becomes a little tougher.

Now, the second reason can somehow be overlooked. The reason being – if I got a link in a mobile ad which could take me to a site where I can download latest ringtones for free, I wouldn’t complain a lot about my poor browsing experience, as long as it is good enough to get the job done.

But the first point is very important. So, in the discussion group, one point which was often raised was about offering free browsing to customers. This, no doubt, would encourage a lot of people to click on the links and check out what the advertisers have on offer, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. The data charges for browsing are quite high and Blyk should think of a strategy to cover its costs if it were to provide its customers with free browsing. What could be the solution? We don’t know as of now. But, as I always say, stay tuned.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones, Blyk.

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University grads come up with a text message based mobile advertising idea

Two graduates from Carnegie Mellon University are working to make text messaging (SMS) facility in your mobile phone more useful than ever. They believe that text message is the ideal and the easiest way for marketers to reach their customers effectively.

The idea is simple. The advertiser will have text codes in his ads and when a customer wants to know more details about the product/service advertised, all he needs to do is take his mobile phone and send a text message and get the information he wants right in his mobile phone. This technology will be launched this summer by the famous Smash Technologies.

This will be a great opportunity for retailers and small business owners to advertise their products/service more effectively. Also, it’s the customer who makes the first move in this campaign by responding to the ad with a text message. So, he can always choose to only respond to those ads which he finds useful. As a result, what you have is – no privacy concerns for the consumer and an effective advertising method for the advertiser.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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