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Transcript
Huawei Technologies Rolling the dice of mobile marketing By Deng Jianhua A fter lunch on Friday, when Jo h n , w h o i s a n a rd e n t cartoon fan, was sitting in the office and feeling a little bored, he noticed that he had just received a WAP Push message on his mobile phone. Wow? It was a flash cartoon book, Confucius Speaks: Words to Live By, that was just sent to him by his buddy Marry, through China Mobile’s Monternet. John immediately clicked the link and downloaded the file to read it. After he finished, he was prompted to click an attached link to buy the cartoon series by Tsai Chih-chung, a famous cartoonist. John was even offered snippets of some other material to read on a trial basis. How considerate, he thought to himself? John immediately clicked the link and entered the Website. After reading a few pages, he decided to buy The Tao Speaks: Lao-Tzu’s Whispers of Wisdom, along with The Dao of Zhuangzi: The Harmony of Nature. John again said to himself, “This is really great? How nice of Marry to think of me and send me this message, and Monternet’s service is so wonderful?” John’s ser vice experience reflects the mobile marketing approach that is currently being introduced by China Mobile on the basis of its content delivery platform (CDP). The CDP is a mobile online business system and supports mobile operators to provide businessto-customer (B2C) services based on value-added contents. Through mobile communication channels, it promotes mobile value-added contents to end users. This marketing mode is called mobile marketing. Mobile advertising becomes a pioneer To date, China Mobile’s Monternet has acquired more than 100 million subscribers and enjoys great success. Statistics show that in promoting Monternet services, mobile advertisements sent from the 1860 SMS platform were far more effective than that on the standard media promotion of service providers (SPs). Mobile advertising has become an important marketing tool to develop business transactions on the CDP. However, mobile advertising can also be a double-edged sword. For instance, if advertisements are randomly sent to subscribers, it is much like sending junk messages to email accounts on the Internet. Subscribers might become highly agitated, start complaining, or even decide to quit the network. Hence, an important key for successful mobile advertising would be to comply with the 4C model and focus on target subscribers. Complying with the 4C model In a survey conducted by the HPI Research Group on SMS advertising, over 3,300 mobile subscribers between the ages 16-45 were interviewed in 11 countries. The study reveals that as many as 86% of those surveyed agreed that it would be acceptable to receive commercial advertisements on their mobile phones if advertisers paid certain mobile charges for them. About 88% of the interviewees do not mind receiving such contents as stock information on their mobile phones, while nearly 31% expressed a high desire to receive stock information and related contents. The results show that subscribers NOV 2007 . ISSUE 36 32 HOW TO OPERATE Rolling the dice of mobile marketing would accept commercial advertisements if certain conditions are satisfied, and that subscribers would like to have the valueless information screened. In summary, consumers need 4C in order to accept mobile advertising under the following criteria: choice - they are free to decide whether or not to accept any advertising message; control - they can easily avoid unwanted sales information; customization - they can customize the types of information they want to receive; and C Quid pro quo - they want some form of pay-back from advertisers such as a reduction in service charges and electronic coupons that can be used in online department stores. If these principles are met, mobile advertisements based on the 4C model will be able to bring subscribers a wider range of added values, instead of irritation and discomfort. Focusing on target subscribers Most people need sufficient time and effort to completely read through a message they receive on their mobile phones. Therefore, if the message being received does not suit the subscriber, it will most likely be deleted and be considered as a junk message. Therefore, an important step to implement the 4C model is to target specific subscribers. Operators also have a greater advantage in this type of advertising since they already know the subscribers’ basic interests and hobbies, as well as their likes and dislikes regarding product information. Hence, by adopting mobile advertising strategies, they can target subscribers and loyal customers and send the kind of mobile advertisements that the subscribers might be interested in. The advertisements sent to subscribers might also be used as coupons. In this way, operators can avoid agitating subscribers, while at the same time increasing the success rate of their advertisements. Spanning the entire purchase process Mobile advertisements are very useful for informing subscribers about products. However, subscribers might not buy products just because they know about 33 NOV 2007 . ISSUE 36 them. Therefore, mobile marketing needs to provide more services than just mobile advertising. In the CDP, the operator sells mainly media contents, which includes RBT, pictures, games, and music. The process of media content consumption is not much different than any other ordinary shopping process in life. Therefore, what needs to be done first is to study the subscriber purchase behavior model. A subscriber’s shopping and purchase behavior can be determined by using the awareness, interest, desire, and action (AIDA) model. A person first becomes aware of a product or service, then he or she begins to show interest in the product or service. As the subscriber becomes more informed about a particular product, then he or she often expresses a desire to purchase the product or service. Mobile marketing should encompass an overall marketing approach that covers the complete purchase process. Phase of awareness In this phase, the operator should Huawei Technologies utilize various methods for the purpose of informing potentially valuable customers about value-added contents. In addition to mobile advertising, mobile marketing measures employed in this phase would include: word-of-mouth, ranking, flexible product display, crossselling, and a search engine. Word-of-mouth: This is a measure whereby various products are promoted among subscribers. For instance, if subscriber A likes a product and thinks that subscribers B, C and D might also enjoy having it, then A might recommend the product. In this article, the flash cartoons sent to John by his friend Marry, through Monternet, serves as a typical example of word-of-mouth promotion. The operator needs to determine who the first 100 subscribers (seed subscribers) will be before star ting the product promotion. This type of community forwarding mechanism, which is based on a broadcasting effect, is not only legal, but also avoids incensing subscribers, and moreover, it enables a higher success rate. In general, the operator can implement i n t e r - s u b s c r i b e r re c o m m e n d a t i o n s together with the preferential score method. Recommenders can be awarded preferential score by operators for their recommendations. Hence, the operator, recommender and receiver can all help to form a triple-win situation. Ranking: Since value-added contents are highly diverse, it is often quite difficult for subscribers to select just the right one. In this case, operators can rank various products from different aspects, such as ranking of new songs, ranking of the most popular games, and ranking of the most beautiful scenery pictures. In this way, the operator can help guide subscribers in the selection and consumption process. Flexible product display: The display of various commodities in supermarkets can directly influence our consumption habits and interests in life. Therefore, the display of products is very important in terms of product sales. As the CDP is a software system controlled by the PC, it can flexibly place products according to subscriber groups and interests. Cross-selling: This purpose of this measure is to create links for products related to the sales contents, in order to indirectly guide the consumption. For example, when a subscriber is in the process of buying pictures of Michael Jordan, the CDP can also offer the subscriber other products about Michael Jordan such as “Video Clips of Michael Jordan” and “NBA Songs”, to further arouse the subscriber’s desire to purchase these items. In this article, after John finished reading the flash car toon, Confucius Speaks: Words to Live By, he bought related commodities through links that were attached to the cartoon. Search engine: The tremendous success of Google clearly illustrates the huge demand of subscribers for active search engines. Operator can also offer a mobile search engine, through which subscribers can more easily and conveniently find what they want. Undoubtedly, this measure will become much more successful over the coming future. Phase of interest and desire In this phase, to attract subscribers, the operator can release product packages that are specifically oriented to different subscriber groups. For example, for high-school students, freshmen, and s o p h o m o re s , o p e r a t o r s c a n re l e a s e “American hip-hop video package” which includes pictures of hip-hop stars, hiphop music, and hip-hop videos. For whitecollar workers, operators can release “leisure at noon package” which includes cartoons by Ron Chu, crossword puzzles, and block games. In addition, the operator can let subscribers experience a few types of contents for free, in order to cultivate their interests and desires to purchase these types of contents. The principle employed here is, “a subscriber can find out more about a given product after taking advantage of the free trial, but the subscriber will not be able to download or obtain the entire product.” For example, the operator can let subscribers try out different contents, but the times or duration of each trial is limited. In a game, operators can let subscribers see typical game scenes and download a limited trial version. Other methods might include providing free directories of consulting reports, and a few news titles for free. Phase of action Mobile marketing can be implemented even in the phase of action. For instance, the operator can refer to the shopping score scheme of supermarkets for the purpose of encouraging subscribers to buy more products. Another method is to encourage subscribers to send gifts to each other. Operators can pack value-added contents into gifts so that subscribers can buy and send them to others. This is considered an important marketing measure. A good example of the successful application of this measure is described in greater details at the beginning of this article, when John received flash cartoons sent by Marry. Phase of after-action For subscribers that have already purchased products, the operator can set up a “VIP customer club”, which gives the operator the opportunity to deploy continuous mobile marketing. In this way, the operator can organize a few customer care activities. Moreover, the CDP can actively send product recommendation messages to subscribers upon subscriber authorization, in the event that an upgraded version of the product is released, or in case there happens to be strongly related products that the subscriber might be interested in. In this modern society, mobile phones have become a necessity for many people. The consumption of contents through mobile phones has now become the latest fashion. Hence, value-added contents provided by the CDP will become more and more popular among subscribers in the near future. In the complete purchase process, which includes the phase of awareness, phase of interest and desire, phase of action, and phase of after-action, mobile marketing can cultivate more pleasant shopping experiences by utilizing more humanistic marketing measures, in order to bring content products closer to subscribers and set up a win-win relationship between subscribers and operators. Editor: Xu Ping [email protected] NOV 2007 . ISSUE 36 34