The number of mobile marketing programs are growing by leaps and bounds. And as the average age of the typical mobile users creeps upwards, mobile campaigns can be more successful when integrated with other promotional tactics.
“Mobile is a channel, not a strategy,” m-Qube President & CEO Jeffrey Glass said yesterday at the Mobile Marketing Roadshow in New York.
Boston-based m-Cubed’s research indicates there are 45 million mobile device users under the age of 25 (a number expected to grow to 52 million in 2006), but as those users age the need to combine it with other tactics will become important to reach consumers at their most comfortable touch points.
Even as the mobile user ages, mobile marketing remains a key component of youth marketing, Glass said. However, these campaigns won’t work if marketers keep their “grown-up hat” on.
“You can’t think that because you wouldn’t be engaged by something on your Blackberry that a kid wouldn’t,” Glass said. “When you’re marketing to kids, you have to think like a kid.”
Consumers spent roughly $6.4 billion on wireless data in 2004, which included downloads of music, ringtones and images as well as subscription rates for services such as text messaging.
“Those are real dollars being spent,” Glass said.
Glass pointed to Digitas, Inc.’s March guerrilla campaign with General Motors’ Catch A G6 sweepstakes as a good example of integration. TV ads for the sweeps steered viewers to a dedicated Web site, where visitors found instructions on how to enter for a chance to win $1 million by sending a cell phone picture-message of a Pontiac G6 to a short-code number.
Mobile campaigns give marketers out-of-home capability to engage consumers with a short-code placed on a billboard, at a ballpark or just about anywhere a mobile device can be used.
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