Do marketers understand the power of the mobile phone?

Did you know that mobile is considered to be the seventh mass medium? In an excellent article on Communities-dominate, the argument is made emphatically. Here are some of the points.

These are the current mass media:- print, music recordings, movies, radio, TV and computer based internet. The mobile phone, at number seven, has a huge advantage over the others and that is it can actually participate in all of them.

That means one is able to read a newspaper or book on one’s mobile, listen to music, watch movies, follow a radio program, watch TV or YouTube. And of course you can browse the internet. However, watching TV on a mobile is not the same as watching shows on the box. The same applies to browsing the internet. But a similar experience may be had nevertheless.

For businesses, what does the mobile phone bring to the marketing mix which is unique to it? The mobile phone is always on. Mobile phone users and owners do not switch their phones off. Not even in cinemas or concerts, much to the aggravation of everyone else in the audience.

Mobile users are never far from their phones. They even sleep within easy reach of their phones. They walk holding the phone in the hand, or glued to the ear. The mobile phone user is attached to his gadget. Always.

Add to this that every owner/user may be identified by his or her telephone number. Through this identifier, the mobile phone user may be tracked as to what his or her mobile phone purchasing activities are, what viewing and shopping preferences they have, what interests them and who they communicate with.

For marketers, a huge plus with regards to the mobile phone must be that it has a built in payment mechanism. In fact in areas such as Africa, the mobile phone is used as a bank. Airtime is sent from one mobile phone to another. And this airtime may be redeemed as cash at mobile phone outlets. No banks are required.

Besides this, other payment systems may operate via a mobile phone. Click-to-buy without the cumbersome credit card number system may open whole new retail doors. As an example, so far 6 billion dollars’ worth of ringtones have been bought and downloaded to mobile phones. That is some trading power.

Finally, the mobile phone represents one of the newest input tools around. We can phone our news to someone. We can text a message. We can take a photograph or video clip and send that through or download onto our computers. It is one of the quickest gadgets around to put information into and of course to send out as well.

Phone users can take a photo and bluetooth it onto their computer in seconds. Or they can take an image and immediately upload it onto Flickr, e-mail or text it to another phone. It is one of the easiest telecommunications gadgets for dispersing data with.

And yet the mobile phone is not more wonderful or better than broadband internet, TV or cinema for instance. However, it can handle these media elements in some form or other. What is required of marketers is an approach that understands its advantages and limitations as well as playing to its strengths.

What kind of mobile phone units are we talking about? Nokia alone ships one million phones every day of the year! The handset makers combined ship over a billion phones annually. For those of you still hanging onto the computer as the prime communications tool of this decade (not even talking about century here), the PC industry shipped 250 million PCs in 2007.

ITU data suggests that the number of mobile cellular subscribers surpassed the three billion mark in August 2007. These phones are capable of capturing and playing back the other six more mature media types, of course with some limitations. A tiny screen on a mobile phone will not be able to provide the same viewer experience as a cinema screen for instance.

One extraordinary bit of information is the fact that the mobile phone has led to the appearance of the most used data application on the planet — SMS or text, hence the growth of Twitter. In Japan, one can subscribe to a daily instalment of a story to receive on your mobile phone. ‘To be continued’ takes on a new meaning.

Because SMS is so immediate, it is preferred over e-mail. And due to its cost-effectiveness, it is often preferred over a phone call. Although the importance of the cost factor is a presumption I am making. The figures look something like this: 800 million active users of e-mail and 2.4 billion active users of SMS.

So, as a marketer, you still don’t think mobile is for you? And don’t shrug this question off because you are a one-man company, or your products and services do not serve a consumer market. You might just be missing the boat by not considering mobile when planning your marketing campaigns.