Mobile Marketing in Traditional Advertising Channels

The emergence of "mobile" in today's global marketplace is unmistakeable, it's everywhere we turn.  While it's true mobile marketing has surpassed some traditional media channels already, the use of properly integrated mobile presents as much of an opportunity to augment, highlight, and enhance traditional media as it does of replacing them.

One such example is Camden County College and their traditional marketing efforts. CCC continues to utilize large display ads in indoor shopping malls and on buses, as well as local TV spots.  For 2011 however, they turned to Text2VIP to add a mobile call to action to these ads.  Their use of a unique keyword in each of their Television, Mall, Bus, and Direct Mail media buys, not only made these traditional ads tremendously more actionable, but also provided an auditing tool to measure the effectiveness of their media expenditures in each of those channels.

If you've ever seen an info-mercial or heard a radio spot, the first half is usually to tell you why the widget is great, the 2nd half of the spot is usually dedicated to encouraging you to take action in the moment, "don't wait-call now".  "The first 10 callers will also receive...."  Finally, the phone number to call or web address is usually repeated so many times it's dizzying. 

It's all about conversion.

Smart marketers know that our busy lives afford us very little chance of seeing or hearing something and committing it to memory for later recall.  Ads which can somehow cause you to stop and interact with them, and more importantly to take immediate action, are marketing efforts found at the intersection of "effective" & "money well spent".

Another such example is that of Tony Luke's famous cheesesteaks.  After the recent purchase of ad space in a local media publication, they added a unique mobile component to give readers an opportunity to connect with Tony Luke's immediately thru SMS, thus opening a line of 2-way communication for future texts and giving Tony Luke's a tool to measure the return on their print media investment.