Giving Voice to Mobile Marketing

About a month ago, my father came up to me with a gleaming smile and said, I just received a call from Maharashtra’s Chief Minister, Prithviraj Chavhan. He wished me Happy Holi! He also asked me to keep it low key and not waste too much water. I am motivated to contribute to an environment-friendly Holi!€ I was surprised at how much that phone call impacted him.

This got me thinking, the exciting world of mobile marketing is growing exponentially. Innovative campaigns have emerged offering a unique user experience. When we think about mobile marketing, we promptly think of mobile data and more specifically smartphone€ marketing. But these campaigns reach a small percentage of the population as they are focused on smartphone users. We fail to consider voice based mobile marketing. The next big thing in mobile marketing is talking to the prospect quite literally! Affirmatively, it has the widest and largest audience and also has the ability to entertain, engage and inspire in ways that mobile internet or even text messaging cannot.

A voice based campaign can become beguiling, it doubles when the marketer uses an attractive tactic like using a celebrity’s voice. Users will receive the message or promotion as a phone call, as simple as that. Additionally, they can call back and hear the message again or choose to be connected to a call centre that will allow them to take action, by purchasing your product or signing up for your service.

Opportunities are a plenty for marketers to leverage voice for mobile marketing campaigns. Voice services will help raise awareness and ultimately, educate consumers who aren’t familiar with mobile data services. This will definitely help the marketer capture interest of customers thereby encouraging him/her to engage the customers in more services such as text messaging, mobile internet, etc.

To list down the benefits of voice based mobile marketing:

• Gain access to any handset
• Reach the widest possible audience
• Create customized voice-based services
• Measure the effectiveness of every single campaign

Voice-based mobile marketing initiatives have been picking up very well and reaping brilliant results. An impressive example of such a campaign is Netcore’s Rural Mobile Marketing Campaign for Hindustan Unilever’s Active Wheel. This campaign exposed a toll free number to the consumers and the target customer had to place a missed call against which he/she would receive humorous content along with product attributes. The enticement of branded entertainment was what lured the audience to get in touch with the brand. The campaign was a glorious success which was underlined by a massive response which catapulted the sale of Active Wheel to a very high market share.

Voice-enabled ads are meant to be entertaining and more engaging in a way that pure display can’t match. When consumers listen to a voice-based ad, marketers will know that the individual is clearly engaged and not accidentally clicking on the ad.

Voice can be more entertaining than text, and can tell more of a story to the consumer. So, if voice isn’t already part of your cross-media mobile campaigns, I’d encourage you to try it.