The mobile eco-system in the country has been flourishing over the past few years and today this gadget has completely changed the lifestyle of the consumer. The diverse portfolio of tablets and smart-phones has led to the evolution of smart marketing. Lower end android phones and low tariff of high speed data plans have increased the penetration of smart-phones in the rural market leading to more subscribers.
With almost 900 million mobile connections across the country, India represents one third of all connections in Asia pacific, and the figure is expected to rise up to 1.16 billion by 2017. About 40% of these are in rural India. The adoption and penetration of the Internet is also being spearheaded by mobile. Close to 59% of Internet users in India have accessed Internet on their mobile
Source: GSMA
Taking marketing to the next level, mobile has extended the two Ps of marketing i.e. place and promotion, since mobile users do not take their purchase decisions at any particular store. Brands have launched several successful campaigns for products targeted at the mobile user.
Hindustan Unilever’s detergent brand Active Wheel came out with a winning campaign in 2011. The missed call activation campaign launched in December 2011 witnessed a great response. It was recognized as the Best Mobile Voice Advertising / Marketing Campaign at the 3rd India Digital Awards organized by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI).
Recognising the relevance of mobile as a marketing platform for brands, Atit Mehta, Head of Media, South Asia for Hindustan Unilever (HUL) said “Mobile is already a key platform for all our brands. There are clear wins that we can achieve across brands using this key platform. We believe that each platform has a defined role to play for various brands. This understanding evolves over time as we understand our consumers better and adapt as they change. The media scenario in India is evolving fast and mobile is a medium that no one can ignore. We are confident our efforts through mobile will help us win with consumers”.
“There are multiple mobile couponing projects across brands, which lead to direct sales push for brands like TRESemmé, Axe, Clinic Plus, and more. We also hosted ‘Mobile Day’ at HUL to encourage brands to adopt the mobile medium for marketing and to gear up and keep pace with the consumer’s media behavior. It was a deep dive into a specific area of digital advertising, namely, Mobile. Two full days were spent in immersion with some of our key partners for mobile advertising and activations. These partners, with their individual areas of expertise in mobile advertising, helped the brand teams at HUL accelerate their approach to mobile advertising” Atit added.
As part of its global deal with Unilever, Brandtone has launched its operations in India, last month. The company will help Unilever’s brands in India to build a one-to-one relationship with consumers.
Mandeep Singh, Managing director, Brandtone, believes any brand that has a product or a service to offer can choose mobile as a marketing platform. “Mobile is a very personal device. It complements traditional media and has one on one engagement with the consumer. Today mobile has reached the impregnable parts of the country and has become a source of information for those people who do not read newspapers or are exposed to other media” said Mandeep.
“With the wide range of smart-phones, mobile apps have emerged as a subset. Though mobile marketing is gaining popularity, it is difficult to predict whether mobile will become a preferred marketing tool in comparison to Television or other media in the coming years” Mandeep added.
No brand ever compromises with its communication. It becomes the fundamental duty of a brand to ensure that the advertisement is delivered to the right audience as engaging information. Here technology plays a key role by acknowledging the interest of the users and delivers the right information.
Srikanth Kakani, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and founder of Vdopia believes that changing consumer preference is encouraging mobile marketing. “Television ads are not traceable but mobile and online ads are 100 percent traceable. With the technology available we can even trace when the consumer closed or re-opened a particular window. We have a compatible technology format for all mobile and smart-phone devices across platforms and operating systems. Our technology and formulated solution are capable enough to deliver the right content to the right user at any given point”.
According to Neil Sequeira, Founder and Director of Buzzfactory, a digital marketing agency, mobile will become an integrated tool that brands will use along with other media. “Most of us access youtube videos and listen to music on mobile. Mobile consumption is bound to increase and become a primary medium for brands to market themselves” said Neil.
Buzzfactory recently launched a mobile brand engagement & marketing platform called “Qliktag” used to create “on-location” mobile marketing campaigns.
“We used Qliktag for a recent mobile campaign “Scan for a surprise!” for a designer t-shirt brand in Bangalore. The campaign featured a QR code which could be scanned with any internet enabled smart-phone as well as a mini Universal Resource Locater (URL) for those who were not comfortable scanning a QR code with their phone camera. On scanning the code Qliktag generated mobile campaign page. On submitting their entry, a 10% discount coupon was instantly pushed through their phone that could be redeemed in the next few hours at the brand’s pop up stall. Besides, an additional 10 percent discount could be availed by tweeting the offer to their friends. This helped increase conversions at the point of sale” Neil added.
Looking at the consumption of mobile content in comparison to other media, mobile marketing seems to be gaining popularity amongst brands, specially the FMCG segment. Coming up with innovative and engaging mobile content will help brands in achieving desired results.
By Devansh Sharma