Location Ties Up with Marketing to Give a Unique Experience to Mobile Subscribers and Marketers
Yogesh S. Bijlani, Country Head India and General Manager APAC
Published in Voice & Data on May 18, 2010
Mobile Marketing as a concept has been prevalent in India for quite a few years and the stakeholders are constantly trying to come up with concepts that they hope would click with the consumers. The reasons are many. The advertisers and marketers realize that the mobile is a ubiquitous device and with an over 500 million subscriber base the 3rd screen has the potential to attract a lot of eyeballs if utilized effectively. The operators know the revenue potential from mobile marketing and how it can boost the falling ARPUs.
Despite the efforts from various quarters, mobile advertising and marketing has not picked up in the Indian market because of various reasons. In the past, advertisers have used channels like SMS to reach out to the subscribers who may or may not be a target or relevant consumer. Such untargeted advertising efforts were ineffective as in many cases the consumer doesn't even read the messages and as a result the service is not interactive and engaging enough. In addition, the advertisers had to bear a massive cost brunt as well.
Recently, the media reported stories that state the mobile advertising market would be in a revival phase with the increasing usage of mobile Internet and the broadening of the spectrum. However, the basic question remains unanswered. Would this help in operators and advertisers to reach out to the mass 500 million subscriber base who in all probably are the potential customers for advertisers in some way or the other?
What are the lessons learnt from the failure of mobile advertising models in the past? As of now the advertisements on the mobile are just forced upon the subscriber. There is no call-to-action kind of a service wherein the subscriber demands information which is thereby provided by the advertiser using the mobile medium. Would the amalgamation of location based services and mobile marketing help in catering to the requirements of a target consumer? Consider the scenario below:
An operator comes out with a USSD based service wherein you are asked to subscribe to the service by dialing a USSD string (say *123#). On dialing this number you get a menu screen on your handset that gives you the option to select from a host of options. Say movies, restaurants, apparels and all of the above. You select movies as the option. Now whenever you are going to a multiplex to watch a movie, the multiplex owner detects your location using your cell ID and sends you a USSD flash message that states a few special offers in the form of discounts or a meal combo etc. You show the flash message at the counter and get your discount. In another scenario, if you are visiting a shopping mall with a plethora of apparel stores, you send a USSD string to check which apparel store is offering special rates and you can plan your visit to the mall accordingly.
So what is essentially happening here is that the advertiser is reaching out to consumers who are actually in need of a product or service. The campaign from an advertiser's perspective is highly targeted and the RoI is much higher than what we have seen in traditional mobile advertising models. Since the service is on a USSD platform, the operators are able to reach out to the subscribers who are using the lowest end of mobile handsets and broadening the reach of the service. This makes it a win-win situation for all the stakeholders involved.
With the technology in place with players like Telenity that has already been working with operators to provide location based services on a USSD platform and making effective use of this technology for various other VAS services, the onus now lies on the operator and advertiser to reach out to the end consumer and showcase the benefits of location based mobile advertising to the masses.
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