by teamrecI believe most of us must have noticed the cute ad of “Airtel” featuring Madhavan and Vidya Balan, in which Madhavan pays the mobile bill or transferring money to his father’s account using mobile phone. Recent whacky ad of “Beam” college student chiding a fellow student with “aaya kya” at different places for the pocket money from the parents. Almost everyone will agree that we get pesky phone calls and SMS informing about one product or another. Whenever we are travelling and are unable to get the latest cricket match scores, we immediately reach to our mobile phones for help.
Till few years ago, we only knew that phones are meant for talking with our near and dear ones. We Indians are vey social and friendly person and it is reflected in the penetration, usage and stupendous growth of mode of communication, be in broadband or telecommunication. TRAI record says, as on 30th November 2009, total telephone subscriber base in India stood at 543.20 million, out of which 506.4 million was of wireless subscription and 37.16 million wire line subscription, with a overall telephone density of 46.32. This has been the outstanding journey of telecommunication revolution of India month on month and year after year. But there is something more which is between the lines. While wireless subscriber base increased by 17.65 million in the month of November, 09, wire line subscriber base declined by 0.10 million. Further, Short Messaging Service or SMS as it is popularly known as, has completed 15 years and it’s usage is increasing more and more every month. As per TRAI data, an Indian sends average 29 SMS every month. Above mentioned numbers are throwing an opportunity for the marketers for horizontal telecommunication convergence. Telecom Media Convergence is about companies crossing multiple industries and not being restricted to their own market. Fixed, mobile and IP service providers can offer content and media services, an equipment provider can offer services directly to the end users. Convergence is the combination of all these media into one platform. It is the merger of telecom, data processing and imaging technologies. This convergence is taking us to a new era of multimedia, in which voice, data, images and video are combined to render services to the user.
In simple terms, mobile advertising is the usage of mobile devices such as mobile phones and mobile web browsers to deliver the promotional messages. Pyramid Research says, by 2012, India will be the fourth largest market for mobile data revenue, behind US, China and Japan. Mobile marketing is done by various ways, SMS being the most popular one. Over past few years, SMS has become big advertising channel and it is one of the valuable revenue sources for service providers, with almost 5% of the revenue coming from SMS value added service. Due to being user friendly and source of whole host of information of varied nature, it has got the scope of reaching various age segments and with various messages. Marketers are using SMS extensively for not only promoting their products but for vigorously promoting television programmes as well. In fact one of every two person in India has acknowledged that they have got promotional SMS in the quarter ending May, 2009. Intensity of using SMS for marketing or promotion is quite high with 75% of receiving minimum of 4 such SMS.
Mobile marketing is being done in two ways:
1) Push advertisement:
• Solicited Ad- Prior permission taken from the customers, e.g. news alerts, job alerts, cricket scores etc.
• Unsolicited Ads- No prior concern taken from the consumers. E.g. promotional message through SMS, promotional calling.
2) Pull Advertisement:
• Advertising when user requests the service the services to themselves from the service provider, e.g. daily horoscope.
Companies are offering downloads of ringtones, wallpapers, games use SMS as a marketing tool a lot more frequently, 37% of urban Indians have received a SMS offering such products, followed by entertainment /media companies i.e. movies, music etc. Garnering a 36% recall rate.
Mobile content consumption trend has thrown a very interesting outcome. A report collected from the website says that, while male population receives SMS about sports and stock market to the level of 63%, female population receives maximum of 52.1% of spiritual message. If we dig the TRAI data further, we see that while joke is most favourite among the age group from 18-44 years, astrology is favourite among 44-54 years and stock, finance and business tips are 55 years and above. Following details gives a bird eye view:SMS Marketing in India Usage
• Cost effective.Now the question arises that why SMS is gaining so much popularity as a tool of advertisement. Reasons are aplenty and few of them are listed below:
• Flexibility to inform target group as and when required.
• Message can be personalized with respect to target audience profile.
• Feedback is immediate.
• Target group demographic profile is known.
• Faster reach.
• Eco-friendly(Paper free).
• Ads can be placed anytime anywhere.
Although SMS are quite frequently used advertising tool, every 2 out of 3 receiver has deleted the message, 1 out of 3 receivers has taken some action. Efficiency of SMS as the marketing tool is as follows:
Multi Media ServicesOther forms of mobile marketing
MMS mobile marketing messages can contain a timed slideshow of images, texts, audio and video. This mobile content is delivered via MMS. Brands are able to send(mobile terminated) and receive(mobile originated) rich content through MMS A2P(application to person) mobile networks to mobile subscribers. In some networks, brands are also able to sponsor messages that are sent P2P(Person to person).
In Game Mobile Marketing
There are essentially three major trends in mobile gaming right now: interactive real-time 3D games, massive multi player games and social networking games. This means a trend towards more complex and more sophisticated, richer game play. On the other side, there are the so-called casual games, i.e. games that are very simple and very easy to play. Most mobile games today are such casual games and this will probably stay so for quite a while to come. Brands are now delivering promotional messages within mobile games or sponsoring entire games to drive consumer engagement. This is known as mobile advergaming or Ad-funded mobile game.
Mobile Web Marketing
Advertising on web pages specifically meant for access by mobile devices is also an option. The Mobile Marketing Association provides a set of guidelines and standards that give the recommended format of ads, presentation, and metrics used in reporting. Google, Yahoo, and other major mobile content providers have been selling advertising placement on their properties for years already as of the time of this writing. Advertising networks focused on mobile properties and advertisers are also available.
Mobile Marketing Via Bluetooth
The rise of Bluetooth started around 2003 and a few companies in Europe have started establishing successful businesses. Most of these businesses offer “hotspot” systems which consist of some kind of content-management system with a Bluetooth distribution function. This technology has the advantages that it is permission-based, has higher transfer speeds and is also a radio-based technology and can therefore not be billed (i.e. is free of charge). The likely earliest device built for mobile marketing via Bluetooth was the context tag of the AmbieSense project (2001-2004). More recently Tata Motors conducted one of the biggest Bluetooth marketing campaigns in India for its brand the Sumo Grande and more of such activities have happened for brands like Walt Disney promoting their movie ‘High School Musical’
Location Based Services
Location-based services (LBS) are offered by some cell phone networks as a way to send custom advertising and other information to cell-phone subscribers based on their current location. The cell-phone service provider gets the location from a GPS chip built into the phone, or using radiolocation and trilateration based on the signal-strength of the closest cell-phone towers (for phones without GPS features). In the UK, networks do not use trilateration; LBS services use a single base station, with a ‘radius’ of inaccuracy, to determine a phone’s location. Meantime, LBS can be enabled without GPS tracking technique. Mobile WiMAX technology is utilized to give a new dimension to mobile marketing. The new type of mobile marketing is envisioned between a BS(Base Station) and a multitude of CPE(Consumer Premise Equipment) mounted on vehicle dashtops. Whenever vehicles come within the effective range of the BS, the dashtop CPE with LCD touchscreen loads up a set of icons or banners of individually different shapes that can only be activated by finger touches or voice tags. On the screen, a user has a frame of 5 to 7 icons or banners to choose from, and the frame rotates one after another. This mobile WiMAX-compliant LBS is privacy-friendly and user-centric, when compared with GPS-enabled LBS.
User-controlled media
Mobile marketing differs from most other forms of marketing communication in that it is often user (consumer) initiated (mobile originated, or MO) message, and requires the express consent of the consumer to receive future communications. A call delivered from a server (business) to a user (consumer) is called a mobile terminated (MT) message. This infrastructure points to a trend set by mobile marketing of consumer controlled marketing communications. Due to the demands for more user controlled media, mobile messaging infrastructure providers have responded by developing architectures that offer applications to operators with more freedom for the users, as opposed to the network-controlled media. Along with these advances to user-controlled Mobile Messaging 2.0, blog events throughout the world have been implemented in order to launch popularity in the latest advances in mobile technology. In June 2007, Airwide Solutions became the official sponsor for the Mobile Messaging 2.0 blog that provides the opinions of many through the discussion of mobility with freedom
Mobile marketing offers lots of benefit, but at the same time it is fraught with some limitations as well. Limitations of mobile advertisement are as follows:
• Intrusion of target audience’s privacy. “Do not call” services across almost all the countries are result of it.
• Reach not compared to another conventional tools of advertising. Various services provider in each circle makes the reach to target consumer limited in comparison of TV advertisement.
• Message content is limited.
• Visual display is not impactful as TV advertising.
• Language barrier, SMS can not be read by illiterates.
• Difficulty to measure the impact or result of mobile advertising.
• Target audience can take mobile advertisement casually.
Having said all above things, with 3 G auction on it’s way, very high level of mobile density which is still in high growth trajectory, mobile advertising, despite it’s limitations, is going to see the full potential in coming days. If we consider the stages of product life cycle, then mobile advertising can put under growth stage where much of it’s potentialities are still to be exhausted and can be used for not only to the benefit of individuals but also for advertisers. Further, share of advertising spend is very less in this fast and growing market, it will get increased in near future. The Jupiter Research report entitled “Mobile Advertising: Delivery Channels, Business Models, & Forecasts” has anticipated that the mobile advertising market will likely to touch $5.7 billion mark by 2014.
Mobile marketing can’t be called competition to TV advertisement, but it will definitely present an option before marketers and advertisers to take their brand and it’s communication to the target consumers. I am throwing this topic open for discussion that mobile marketing along with online and social media marketing has long way to go in coming days and it will shape the way messages and communications are being delivered to the target audience.
Note: Data’s and graphs are collected from various websites.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mr. Mukul Bhartiya is currently working as National Category Manager with Aditya Birla Retail Ltd, looking after pulses category. He has 10+ years of experience in the field of Sales and Marketing in Food FMCG, Food Retail and Commodity Futures.
He is a MBA from Center of Management Education, VAMNICOM, Pune run by Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India.
He has shaped up and established the business of different organization in different geographical locations, i.e., Staples business of ABRL in Mumbai, Staples business of Reliance Retail in Rest of Maharashtra, Commodity Futures business of MCX in Bihar/Jharkhand and Retail & Consumer marketing business of NAFED in all over India. He has also worked on formulating business strategy of agriculture commodity marketing for NAFED for 2 years and designed strategy for procurement and disposal of oilseeds under Price Support Scheme during the period of 2002 to 2005.
He has been given appreciation letter for presentation and review of business activities of NAFED by Estimates Committee of Parliament, which reviews the non-plan expenditure of Government of India.
He has done a project of International Trade Development among cooperatives in India, Iran, Kuwait and Sri Lanka for International Cooperative Alliance. This project was presented in different meetings of ICA at Thailand and China during 2004-05.
He has published an article titled “Edible Oil Market Scenario” in market outlook segment of May-June 2003 issue of Oils & Fats Today.
