Those of you versed in the black art of consumer marketing will have no doubt come across the four P's of marketing, these being:
Product
Positioning
Place
Price
With the phenomenal growth in Mobile phone ubiquity (4 billion mobile phone contracts worldwide according to the ITU) comes a new and exciting opportunity to market to consumers anytime, anyplace and anywhere (cue Martini music and white-toothed Adonis ploughing down the slopes on skis dressed in 70's style all in one ski gear). With that opportunity comes an obligation to market to those consumers responsibly and in a non-intrusive way.
Academics studying social networking and mobile marketing have therefore come up with a new set of four P's for marketers wishing to exploit the fantastic opportunity that the mobile phone provides:
Privacy, Permission, Preference and Promotion. Hang on, there are more though. Other researchers think the new four Ps are slightly different. They claim, for instance, that Privacy and permission are just one P and that Personalisation (or Relevance but that doesn't start with a P) and Proximity should also be included.
Not being one for stopping the academics have different opinions, I've decided to sit rigidly on the fence and I've opted for all five distinct P's of Mobile Marketing. Privacy, Preference, Promotion, Personalisation and Proximity.
The 5 Ps of Mobile Marketing
Privacy and Permission relate to the obvious need to protect the consumer from unsolicited spamming. Being available to receive marketing messages at anytime could be a real nuisance, especially if there are hundreds of messages a day being bleeped up on your mobile screen twenty four hours a day. Therefore, it's important that mobile marketers respect privacy and only send messages that the consumer has "opted in" to receive.
Preference is all about ensuring mobile marketing campaigns are targeted towards the consumers individual needs, interests and preferences. Marketing via the mobile phone is such a personal experience that it would be pointless sending offers or campaign messages on, say, FHM magazine to those under the age of 16. It would also be pointless sending a digital voucher for a half price Sheffield Star newspaper to someone living in Ipswich. Understanding your target audience and gathering as much intelligence about their status, needs and interests (and those of their friends and contacts) is key in the mobile marketing world.
Once you understand the preferences of individual target consumers, you can then personalise the messages for them. This doesn't just include using clever "mail merge" techniques that the best SMS aggregators offer to ensure that the customer's name appears in an SMS text you send them. It means tailoring offers to your consumers, sending the right offers at the right time (suggest they pamper themselves with a discount Spa session on their birthday for example) to ensure maximum chance that they're (a) going to read the message and (b) act upon it not just discard it.
Proximity could be regarded as a further extension of personalisation or preference. Using technologies such as location based services to send offers and messages at the right time, when your target is in a particular geograpahic vicinity to where they can act upon your message. For example, retailers may have special offers to shift surplus stock or increase footfall on a particular day. There'd be no point sending offers to those not near enough the a participating retail outlet to take part. For example, imagine Tesco's store in Hemel Hempsted had a job lot of fresh caviar that was about to reach its sell by date. You could text an offer of 1/2 price caviar to anyone within a 5 mile radius of the store. Better still use the other Ps and ensure you target someone who is more likely to be interested in buying caviar... Arsenal FC used a similar approach. They were finding that the bars in their new Emirates stadium were not full on matchdays. Instead supporters preferred to drink in the pubs outside the ground where beer was generally cheaper. This not only meant the stadium bars were not making enough money, but supporters were arriving late, en masse for games causing congestion at the turnstiles. Arsenal's marketing agency solved the problem by targeting fans it knew would be at the game (the Preference and Personalisation Ps) based on the fact they were season ticket holders. Fans were offered 2 for 1 on drinks in the stadium bars. The beauty for Arsenal was that due to the flexibility of SMS, they needn't run the offer if the stadium bars were already doing good business. The campaign could have been improved by another P, the Proximity. Fans already sat in their seats would receive the same offer as those outside the ground. If getting fans into the ground early was the only aim, then they needn't waste the cost of an SMS targeting these fans. Location Based Services would have identified which fans were not in the stadium already.
Anyway, that's a brief overview of the 5 Ps of Mobile Marketing. It's just a taster as there are many underlying issues and considerations for each of these Ps, and I'm sure even more Ps will evolve over time. And let's not forget the original 4 Ps are still relevant for mobile marketing campaigns. So, is that 9 P's we have now?!
Thanks to Paul at Sybase 365 for prompting my thoughts about the Ps of Mobile Marketing.
Product
Positioning
Place
Price
With the phenomenal growth in Mobile phone ubiquity (4 billion mobile phone contracts worldwide according to the ITU) comes a new and exciting opportunity to market to consumers anytime, anyplace and anywhere (cue Martini music and white-toothed Adonis ploughing down the slopes on skis dressed in 70's style all in one ski gear). With that opportunity comes an obligation to market to those consumers responsibly and in a non-intrusive way.
Academics studying social networking and mobile marketing have therefore come up with a new set of four P's for marketers wishing to exploit the fantastic opportunity that the mobile phone provides:
Privacy, Permission, Preference and Promotion. Hang on, there are more though. Other researchers think the new four Ps are slightly different. They claim, for instance, that Privacy and permission are just one P and that Personalisation (or Relevance but that doesn't start with a P) and Proximity should also be included.
Not being one for stopping the academics have different opinions, I've decided to sit rigidly on the fence and I've opted for all five distinct P's of Mobile Marketing. Privacy, Preference, Promotion, Personalisation and Proximity.
The 5 Ps of Mobile Marketing
Privacy and Permission relate to the obvious need to protect the consumer from unsolicited spamming. Being available to receive marketing messages at anytime could be a real nuisance, especially if there are hundreds of messages a day being bleeped up on your mobile screen twenty four hours a day. Therefore, it's important that mobile marketers respect privacy and only send messages that the consumer has "opted in" to receive.
Preference is all about ensuring mobile marketing campaigns are targeted towards the consumers individual needs, interests and preferences. Marketing via the mobile phone is such a personal experience that it would be pointless sending offers or campaign messages on, say, FHM magazine to those under the age of 16. It would also be pointless sending a digital voucher for a half price Sheffield Star newspaper to someone living in Ipswich. Understanding your target audience and gathering as much intelligence about their status, needs and interests (and those of their friends and contacts) is key in the mobile marketing world.
Once you understand the preferences of individual target consumers, you can then personalise the messages for them. This doesn't just include using clever "mail merge" techniques that the best SMS aggregators offer to ensure that the customer's name appears in an SMS text you send them. It means tailoring offers to your consumers, sending the right offers at the right time (suggest they pamper themselves with a discount Spa session on their birthday for example) to ensure maximum chance that they're (a) going to read the message and (b) act upon it not just discard it.
Proximity could be regarded as a further extension of personalisation or preference. Using technologies such as location based services to send offers and messages at the right time, when your target is in a particular geograpahic vicinity to where they can act upon your message. For example, retailers may have special offers to shift surplus stock or increase footfall on a particular day. There'd be no point sending offers to those not near enough the a participating retail outlet to take part. For example, imagine Tesco's store in Hemel Hempsted had a job lot of fresh caviar that was about to reach its sell by date. You could text an offer of 1/2 price caviar to anyone within a 5 mile radius of the store. Better still use the other Ps and ensure you target someone who is more likely to be interested in buying caviar... Arsenal FC used a similar approach. They were finding that the bars in their new Emirates stadium were not full on matchdays. Instead supporters preferred to drink in the pubs outside the ground where beer was generally cheaper. This not only meant the stadium bars were not making enough money, but supporters were arriving late, en masse for games causing congestion at the turnstiles. Arsenal's marketing agency solved the problem by targeting fans it knew would be at the game (the Preference and Personalisation Ps) based on the fact they were season ticket holders. Fans were offered 2 for 1 on drinks in the stadium bars. The beauty for Arsenal was that due to the flexibility of SMS, they needn't run the offer if the stadium bars were already doing good business. The campaign could have been improved by another P, the Proximity. Fans already sat in their seats would receive the same offer as those outside the ground. If getting fans into the ground early was the only aim, then they needn't waste the cost of an SMS targeting these fans. Location Based Services would have identified which fans were not in the stadium already.
Anyway, that's a brief overview of the 5 Ps of Mobile Marketing. It's just a taster as there are many underlying issues and considerations for each of these Ps, and I'm sure even more Ps will evolve over time. And let's not forget the original 4 Ps are still relevant for mobile marketing campaigns. So, is that 9 P's we have now?!
Thanks to Paul at Sybase 365 for prompting my thoughts about the Ps of Mobile Marketing.
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