Although ‘mobile marketing’ is very much in its infancy, and may seem way beyond the reach of most SMEs, it can be one of the most cost effective ways to engage with your customer-base and can even provide new revenue opportunities.
‘Mobile marketing’, as the name suggests, is simply using the outlet of the 50 million mobile phones in the UK to market your products or services.
The primary drivers behind mobile marketing are typically to build up a better profile of your customer base and establish tools to encourage regular communication on an ongoing base.
The first stage is always building up a database of contact details, and in this case means getting clients to give you their mobile phone numbers. Although people are famously protective about giving out contact information, they are much more likely to participate if they have a chance to win a prize, and people’s propensity to send text messages makes this the ideal medium.
Such promotions, typically referred to as ‘Text 2 Win’, are well within the marketing of most consumer-facing SMEs. Details of the competition are distributed together with usual print materials or packaging, and customers are requested to text in to win a prize.
The prize can be a product discount, tickets to a sports event, or free ringtones or wallpapers for their phones.
The key asset that you need to be able to bring to the party is regular communication with your customers through print media. If your primary business is through the web, then mobile marketing is not effective, as web-savvy customers tend not to sign up for mobile services.
Larger firms will normally engage a specialist agency to run their mobile marketing campaign, but for many SMEs, it’s likely to be more effective to run the competition in-house.
Companies can provide very low cost SMS services that can be operated over a website with little mobile expertise, and for a few hundred pounds will set-up a ‘shortcode’ and provide you with a simple web interface to process the messages.
Of course, if you are expecting millions of different entries, you may want to consider a slightly more automated system, but millions of entries would be a very good problem for most SMEs to have.
The usual format of the competition is for people to text in the answer to a multiple-choice question together with their name, house number, and postcode. In choosing a winner, you only need to pick someone who has the right answer, and you can process the SMSs to build a customer database that can be used for direct marketing.
The usual data protection issues apply with regard to opt-out for direct mailing, but you may want to be more careful with regard to sending unsolicited text messages.
ICSTIS, the UK regulator (www.icstis.org.uk) provides comprehensive advice for anyone looking to launch SMS services and you should be careful as unsolicited messages are treated as ‘spam’ by your customers and network operators.
In addition to building customer databases, mobile lends itself very well to viral marketing, and this can even present a revenue opportunity to many SMEs. If your business has strong appeal to young people, humorous ringtones, wallpapers, or text messages can fly around very quickly, and if sufficiently compelling, people will be willing to pay for them.
When effective, this type of campaign can contribute to significant brand awareness and loyalty to a young demographic and for many consumer-facing SMEs this could provide a significant amount of revenue for very little work, much in same way as white-label credit cards did in the 1990s.
For the more ambitious, a specialist ringtone or wallpaper associated with your firm’s brand can spread awareness as well as providing additional revenue. If it’s going to be effective it needs to either be funny or ‘cool’ to the youth audience and your ability to generate compelling creative will be critical to your success.
Friday, 26 June 2009
Thursday, 11 June 2009
Is Your Business An 'Ugly Baby'?
If there is one table the UK economy consistently comes top of it is the business failure rates in Europe. But why does this happen?
If someone told you your baby was ugly, would you throw it away? And would you welcome the advice of anyone who told you to do so?
There is a link between these two ideas, and if you stick with me I’ll tell you what it is.
Businesses rarely fail from lack of sales. A more common failure is to judge the market potential inaccurately. Much as we all love the concept of conducting market research, we are not so in love with the conclusions. Market research will provide the figures and facts to support a business’s plan – but are these businesses prepared to believe the results?
Two people have what seems to be ‘a good idea’. In the way of the world, one of them ends up pregnant. For nine months she carries the concept around.
She (or both of you) chooses a name and a location. On a certain day with a lot of shouting and screaming the child is born. People ring up to congratulate the new arrival. It is extensively advertised in the local paper, and you both spend the rest of your life spending money to watch it grow.
Some nine months ago you thought of a business idea. You carry the concept around and choose a name and a location. On a certain day the business is launched with a lot of screaming and shouting. People ring up to congratulate you. It is extensively advertised in the local paper, and you both spend the rest of your life spending money to watch it grow.
I meet you pushing the pram. ‘May I look at your youngster? Thank you. Can I just say that my extensive research shows this child is without doubt the ugliest infant I have ever had the occasion to meet.’
Are you pleased at my comment? Do you thank me for telling you that your child is not worth the bother? Do you leave the infant on the roadside and sneak away? You have not gone through nine months of effort simply to pack it in on the opinion of a so-called expert.
Thus it is with a business. Even if research conclusively proves the infant business will not reach maturity – dare you pack it in and waste all your efforts? No way – it may be ugly, but it’s your baby!
The brave decision if you have any doubt after your market research is not to begin.
The poorest of businesses will normally last for three years. In the first year you notice nothing as you struggle to develop. The second year brings vague doubts. Finally in the third year the doubts become reality.
In the international Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey of entrepreneurial activity, the UK’s overall score of 5.4 is well below the average of 8.0 and far lower than the scores of countries such as the US (10.5) and New Zealand (14.0). We rank 23rd out of 37 countries.
However, surveys by the World Economic Forum and Anderson rank the UK as having one of the best regulatory regimes in the world for starting a business. This suggests that it may be other factors, notably our attitudes and culture, which are holding us back.
The GEM studies support this conclusion, showing that individuals in the UK are less inclined to self-employment than in other countries such as the US and Germany and less aware of entrepreneurial opportunities.
Less than half of our population believe they have the qualities to start up a business and more than a third say fear of failure would prevent them doing so.
Entrepreneur Secrets’ aspirations are high: we aim to have a major impact, bringing about a sea change in attitudes to enterprise.
Some people regard “culture” as an immovable constant or a mysterious undercurrent immune to intervention. Yet our national history is rich with examples of major changes in social attitudes that have been brought about through co-ordinated interventions, often in the form of coalition-based campaigns.
From the abolition of slavery through to votes for women, the provision of free education, protection of the environment, condemnation of drunk driving and innumerable other shifts in the public mood, there is hardly a change that has not been at least partly due to concerted attempts to influence people’s views.
But Entrepreneur Secrets needs to bring about change relatively quickly. The development of an enterprise culture is widely acknowledged to be hugely important for our economy, for the cohesion of our society and for helping to empower individuals.
If someone told you your baby was ugly, would you throw it away? And would you welcome the advice of anyone who told you to do so?
There is a link between these two ideas, and if you stick with me I’ll tell you what it is.
Businesses rarely fail from lack of sales. A more common failure is to judge the market potential inaccurately. Much as we all love the concept of conducting market research, we are not so in love with the conclusions. Market research will provide the figures and facts to support a business’s plan – but are these businesses prepared to believe the results?
Two people have what seems to be ‘a good idea’. In the way of the world, one of them ends up pregnant. For nine months she carries the concept around.
She (or both of you) chooses a name and a location. On a certain day with a lot of shouting and screaming the child is born. People ring up to congratulate the new arrival. It is extensively advertised in the local paper, and you both spend the rest of your life spending money to watch it grow.
Some nine months ago you thought of a business idea. You carry the concept around and choose a name and a location. On a certain day the business is launched with a lot of screaming and shouting. People ring up to congratulate you. It is extensively advertised in the local paper, and you both spend the rest of your life spending money to watch it grow.
I meet you pushing the pram. ‘May I look at your youngster? Thank you. Can I just say that my extensive research shows this child is without doubt the ugliest infant I have ever had the occasion to meet.’
Are you pleased at my comment? Do you thank me for telling you that your child is not worth the bother? Do you leave the infant on the roadside and sneak away? You have not gone through nine months of effort simply to pack it in on the opinion of a so-called expert.
Thus it is with a business. Even if research conclusively proves the infant business will not reach maturity – dare you pack it in and waste all your efforts? No way – it may be ugly, but it’s your baby!
The brave decision if you have any doubt after your market research is not to begin.
The poorest of businesses will normally last for three years. In the first year you notice nothing as you struggle to develop. The second year brings vague doubts. Finally in the third year the doubts become reality.
In the international Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey of entrepreneurial activity, the UK’s overall score of 5.4 is well below the average of 8.0 and far lower than the scores of countries such as the US (10.5) and New Zealand (14.0). We rank 23rd out of 37 countries.
However, surveys by the World Economic Forum and Anderson rank the UK as having one of the best regulatory regimes in the world for starting a business. This suggests that it may be other factors, notably our attitudes and culture, which are holding us back.
The GEM studies support this conclusion, showing that individuals in the UK are less inclined to self-employment than in other countries such as the US and Germany and less aware of entrepreneurial opportunities.
Less than half of our population believe they have the qualities to start up a business and more than a third say fear of failure would prevent them doing so.
Entrepreneur Secrets’ aspirations are high: we aim to have a major impact, bringing about a sea change in attitudes to enterprise.
Some people regard “culture” as an immovable constant or a mysterious undercurrent immune to intervention. Yet our national history is rich with examples of major changes in social attitudes that have been brought about through co-ordinated interventions, often in the form of coalition-based campaigns.
From the abolition of slavery through to votes for women, the provision of free education, protection of the environment, condemnation of drunk driving and innumerable other shifts in the public mood, there is hardly a change that has not been at least partly due to concerted attempts to influence people’s views.
But Entrepreneur Secrets needs to bring about change relatively quickly. The development of an enterprise culture is widely acknowledged to be hugely important for our economy, for the cohesion of our society and for helping to empower individuals.
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