Radical Thoughts - The amalgamation of Mobile Marketing || Mohammed Fahd || IIM Shillong || November 2015 edition

The Amalgamation of Mobile Marketing

- Mohammed Fahd

IIM Shillong

“The 21^st century is a digital book.” Incredibly true words stated by the character of Agent Jasper Sitwell in the popular Marvel movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier. However, while Hydra had taught the rogue SHIELD how to read this book in the movie, real world organisations have learnt it on their own & utilise it in a rather less sinister manner. The penetration of smart phones in the world will soon outstrip that of laptops & desktops. In fact, in many developing countries such as India a huge chunk of the population has already gained access to a smart phone, a large part of which never even owned a fixed landline phone. Thus, a large market has made itself available & with most of them being active on social media websites, every large company is looking for an efficient way to track & understand what these new customers, combined with their old ones, want & what they are saying about them. The contents of interest in this digital book are being made available on these social media websites & with the rise of mobile marketing a larger market is now available for marketers both to learn from & to provide to.

So how are modern companies embracing the feedback they receive? Well, the process they employ is relatively straightforward. A number of social media monitoring systems have been developed with every new system being more sophisticated than the previous one. However, they are also being integrated with Voice of Customer (VOC) data. This integration of social media with VOC data provides much more information as stated by Bruce Temkin, managing partner of the Temkin Group, “Companies are moving from just listening to their customers' moods to figuring out how to respond. It's one thing to know what people are saying about you, but it's another thing to know how to react and engage your customers.” This trend is now becoming apparent with more & more social media monitoring companies merging or acquiring traditional VOC companies.

And how is the growth of mobiles going to help everyone? Well, mobile marketing is the answer because it’s going to be huge. That’s why companies like InMobi are the next big thing because they can target these mobile platforms & help the big companies of this time & age reach out directly to their customers. As stated by GMR Marketing’s Senior Vice-President, Bryan Rasch, “Smartphones and tablets are taking over, as we get past more than fifty percent of people having smartphones, we're getting into the meat of consumerism, in which people will have a device that allows them to have a richer engagement with content. This presents lots of opportunities for retailers to introduce a full-blown mobile program.” Additionally, the campaigns can be even more successful if integrated with other channels, such as local & social.  Moreover, geolocation tools are emerging as an increasingly popular way to provide consumers customised information about a company’s products.

Thus, the 21^st century & especially the last 2 years have provided a relative breakthrough for marketers to use the inter-connected world to their advantage & with technology advancements providing more & more insights, let’s hope that any further advances don’t go the rogue SHIELD/Hydra way!