My Thoughts On Mobile Marketing

The present scenario defines a drastic transformation of mobile industry across the globe where in it has reached a higher level in its graph of growth and development.  We can expect the same kind of changes in mobile marketing due to evolution of latest technology in the mobile industry such as Androids and maces. These evolutions caused in revolutionizing common men’s access on varied information available around him. The marketing strategic to a percentage of 90 of a company are on the untapped market called the bottom of the triangle (middle class & lower class). Thus considering this strategy as a main concern by the mobile industry they managed to reach all the sector of the society which popularised mobiles and mobile networks. These evolutions of mobile industry lead in bringing mobile marketing to the lime light. 

Mobile marketing is a promotional activity designed for service delivery to cell phones, smart phones and other handheld devices, usually as a component of a multi-channel campaign. Although there are various definitions for the concept of mobile marketing, Mobile marketing is broadly defined as the use of the mobile medium as a means of marketing communication or distribution of any kind of promotional or advertising messages to customer through wireless networks.

The expanded facility of mobile devices have also elapsed for few new types of interactive marketing plans such as Location based service where in the provided service detects the area of the user in for connecting and sending messages for business in that area, Augmented reality mobile campaign - are different pattern of channel or service which overlay the user’s phone display with specific information of location and product in a particular area, 2D barcode service are services which avail  barcode that scan vertically and horizontally to include much more information. A mobile user can scan barcodes in the environment to access associated information. GPS messaging service involves location – specific messages that the user picks up when he/she comes into the range.

Mobile marketing has flourished to certain substantiate types of it where in it functions with newly evolved technology as its medium. The certainty which the mobile marketing has developed was through its foremost medium called SMS marketing. SMS Marketing has become increasingly popular ever since the rise of SMS in the early 2000s in Europe and some parts of Asia, when businesses started to collect mobile numbers and send off content. The first cross-carrier SMS short code campaign was run by Txtbomb in 2001 for an Island Records release, following it was the Labatt Brewing Company in 2002.  This initial period of mobile marketing gathered a vast profitable economic status in their particular yearly revenue.  The growth of mobile marketing extended to its next stage as MMS marketing.  MMS mobile marketing can contain a timed slideshow of images, text, audio and video. This mobile content is delivered via MMS (Multimedia Message Service).  Example - BMW generated 60M$ revenue through MMS marketing. The BMW campaign  launched the MMS marketing by customizing a picture of a car to be the model of the car  that the costumer had, and the colour of the car, with the wheel rims that the costumer had bought. Then the BMW virtually fitted the suggested winter tyre for that car and wheel. This image was sent to the costumer as MMS.

The change in the models and services of mobile, the consumption of mobile has also changed from just connecting people to different uses such as gaming, listening to  music, watching videos, camera, calculation etc. These changes of mobile utilization lead in bringing a new phase for mobile marketing which is known as In-game mobile marketing. Example - Coca Cola launched a mobile game in India called " Thumbs Up Everest" a rock climbing adventure that included weekly prize giveaways and a top-score board. The results were impressive with more than 350,000 games downloaded each week. The later development in the medium of mobile marketing was the introduction of QR codes. QR codes acts as a visual hyper link to a page or it makes it easy to jump someone to a mobile optimized offer page and as such, represent a very powerful tool for initiating consumer engagement at time when the marketing piece is likely triggering its most emotional response. Example - KFC has placed QR codes on its soft drink cups that aim to engage consumers and let them compete for a chance to win hundreds of prizes given away every hour.   Mobile marketing through Bluetooth is considered to be the latest development  in this era.  The rise of Bluetooth started around 2003 and a few companies 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, which has higher transfer speeds and is also a radio-based technology and can therefore not be billed. Example - Chevrolet spark LPG campaign which held in a shopping mall achieved close to 11,000 downloads in two days. Kropex exhibited Chevy Spark LPG cars in the mall that were enabled with Bluetooth transmitters, which ran over a single weekend, existing BluFi infrastructure in the well-known Forum mall in Bangalore mall was converted in to a "Chevy Zone."

The 20^th century saw an insurrection on computers, internet, and mobiles which lead to a parallel economic growth caused due to these revolutions of technology. As a mere concern of these developments the marketing channels advanced to a better stage such as emailing, web advertisements, internet and SMS. Now in 21^st century, it is considered to be a revolutionary period of mobile which leads to an era of mobile marketing. The Kelsey Group, a marketing research company, predicted that the mobile advertising and marketing industry would grow from to $3.1 billion in 2013, up from $160 million in 2008.