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From the statistics above, you may think that the only application of mobiles is texting. Far from it; here are 20 marketing applications of mobile marketing, starting with the text-based ones. These are a summary of the main mobile marketing applications produced by Helen Keegan of Beep Marketing (author of the IDM (2005) module on digital marketing). The applications use Helen’s categories, with my examples added.

1. Text and win. This is a convenient way to manage a competition or prize draw and is surprisingly popular with consumers. Think of the recent on-pack promotions by Walkers to win a million iPods — there was a draw every five minutes. Admap (2005) reports that a Cadbury on-pack `Txt’n'Win’ campaign offering £1 million in prizes received more than five million messages — a response rate of 8 per cent — thanks partly to the novelty of this approach and the ongoing popularity of prize draws.
2. Voting and participation TV. Text voting for reality TV programmes such as Big Brother and The X-Factor are incredibly popular .
3. 3. Quizzes. Quizzes work well on mobile phones, using either text messaging or a java application for a deeper level of interactivity than text alone (graphics and sound can be incorporated). The typical way to start a quiz is to text in a keyword to a shortcode and a question is sent to you by return. Mobile quizzes are a good way for brands to engage consumers. In 2005, Birds Eye asked consumers for their preferences for a new food style and combined this with the chance to win in a prize draw.
4. Mobile content (pictures, ringtones, video). Thanks to the popularity of ringtones, the mobile content industry is already huge and has increased rapidly.

According to Cellular News (2005), a recent Mintel report put the UK content market at $1 billion, with ringtones accounting for the largest share of downloads (33 per cent of volume sales), followed by games (26 per cent of the market). The remainder is made up of wallpapers/screensaves (13 per cent), gambling (9 per cent), music (8 per cent) and others (11 per cent), which includes news updates from football clubs, the Stock Exchange and other special groups. The volume of sales is expected to increase from 30 million downloads in 2002 to an estimated 760 million in 2005 — a massive 25-fold increase.

According to IDM (2005), brands are now capitalizing on the popularity of mobile content and are using it as part of their marketing effort. A picture or ringtone can be a second- or third-tier prize in a free prize draw or other competition which doesn’t involve physically sending out many prizes.

Any service such as a ringtone delivered by WAP can be invoked from a text message. For example, Parker’s Car Guide now prints ad text `go parkers’ to 89080 (a short code) for quick access to the Parker’s WAP site, which provides car prices ‘on-the-go’ at £1 for 10 minutes.

And I managed to review mobile content without talking about the Crazy Frog!

The popularity of online content is partly down to the ease of payment. No credit card is required, and no complex authentication. Users of services are simply billed through their network provider for these services. This payment service has been used in novel ways — for example, during the 2004 tsunami over £1 million was raised through SMS donations.

1. Games. Mobile games are very popular, and are even spawning new converged hardware. You may have seen addicts playing on the Nokia N-Gage or a Gizmondo. Again, these games make good low-cost competition prizes or incentives to sign-up for permission-based text or e-mail marketing. Coca-Cola has signed a deal to produce Coca-Cola branded games which customers will buy rather than download for free.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Applications of mobile marketing Part 1

• Applications of Mobile Marketing Part 3
• Applications of Mobile Marketing Part 2
• Mobile commerce & Internal communications
• Challenges of building online customer relationships
• The Genie mobile Internet portal
• What All Plans Must Cover
• Why Businesses Succeed
• Who will Handle Commercial Marketing Integration?
• Launch Your Digital Marketing Program part 1
• Globally Network, Internet Customers Marketing

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