From our personal lives to our business lives, there’s no doubt that mobile technology has transformed just about everything we do. Mobile marketing however is still a relatively new channel – but the old rules of marketing apply. And rule number 1 in every marketing text book states ‘know your customer’. To succeed it’s essential that you understand your target audience – how they live, how they work, how they play, and how they communicate.
Here’s some interesting stats worth considering;
- 6.75% of people have an iPhone, 7.75% Android and 8.53% Blackberry (Comscore, 2011)
- 72% of people use text messaging on their mobile phones (Pew Internet, 2010)
So… if you were to go away today and develop mobile apps for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry, you would probably run up quite a large development bill and you would only be getting about 23% coverage . This isn’t even taking into account whether or not your audience like using apps – you would need to get people to download and install it before the communication can even begin!
SMS on the other hand has universal coverage and the majority of people like using it! You also don’t need to spend thousands of pounds enabling it on people’s mobile phones. Even the simplest SMS send can reach tens of thousands of customers in seconds, regardless of where they are or whether or not they have a smartphone, for just a few pence a message. This is a cheap way to test the water and understand your customers’ appetite for mobile marketing, before making a major investment.
