INSIDE MOBILE: Innovations of Mobile Marketing (
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Mobile marketing has now gone mainstream. In fact, mobile marketing is poised to become the most important marketing vehicle of all time. There are simply too many mobile phones and too many people carrying them around all day for it not to become the primary focus of marketing professionals. Here, Knowledge Center mobile and wireless analyst J. Gerry Purdy outlines the four mobile marketing innovations that are taking mobile marketing to the next level.
Mobile
is now being thought of as a major marketing platform alongside print
(including billboards), radio and television (broadcasting), and
online. You now see billboard and bus ads with "Text 'CAR' to 12345"
for information on the latest hot car or many other innovative
marketing campaigns. Ads now appear on mobile phonessometimes as
banners and sometimes embedded in a product but not often as a total
screen that takes over the phone.
Mobile, however, is now poised to
become the most important marketing vehicle of all time. Marketing on a
mobile device is more personal than any other form of marketing
promotion. And it gives the brand doing the promotion a way to track
demographics on the behavior of those who respond that no other
marketing process is able to do.
In addition, the mobile phone is
the only two-way marketing medium that can be fully customized to the
subscriber's specific interest and precise location. And the mobile
phone is the only device that participates directly in the marketing
promotions (coupons to the phone) and the redemption (phone used for
loyalty identification and payment).
Here are the four innovations that are taking mobile marketing to the next level:
Innovation No. 1: Near Field Communication (NFC)
You've likely seen the latest
generation of credit card payment terminals in major retailers; they
have a contactless wireless reader at the top of the terminal. The card
or phone contains a radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip much
like the one used for highway tolls. With the chip and wallet software,
consumers can select which card they want to use on the phone's screen,
wand it over the contactless terminal and the purchase is completed.
Major players here include ViVOtech, First Data, Visa, MasterCard and
the major handset manufacturers.
All it will take for this to enable
the mobile phone to replace most credit and debit cards is for leading
handset manufacturers such as Apple, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, RIM, HTC
and LG to begin installing the small NFC chip in each phone. That will
happen over the next few years.
Innovation No. 2: Mobile as part of integrated marketing campaigns
The use of a mobile phone in
marketing campaigns has typically been narrowly focused, such as
responding to a short code (for example, voting for our choices in
popular shows such as "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars").
The latest innovation is to use mobile as part of a broader, integrated
marketing campaign so that mobile becomes an accepted vehicle for
marketing professionals to use. For example, Coca-Cola might create an
integrated campaign that puts short codes in print and on television,
uses the mobile for response, and then issues a coupon via the mobile
phone that can been redeemed at retail for a discount.
Mobile marketing firms such as
Air2Web, iLoopMobile, VeriSign, Singlepoint and others are now working
more closely with major advertising and marketing promotion firms to
make mobile an integral part of their plans.
Mobile & Wireless 
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