Page 358 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

to your offerings and invite them to give you permission to contact them
directly. Therefore, indirect mobile marketing is the practice of enhancing
your traditional and new-media programs (TV, radio, print, outdoor media,
Internet, email, voice, and so on) by inviting individual members of your
audience to pull out a phone or mobile device and respond to your mobile
call to action. On television, for example, your call to action may ask viewers
to text a keyword to a short code to cast a vote. (Think about the TV show
The Voice, in which the audience votes on Twitter or Facebook.) Or you may
ask participants to fill out a form on the web or on the mobile Internet, giving
their mobile phone number to participate in the program.

Uniting mobile marketing with social media

The mobile aspects of social media marketing occur within both direct and indirect
mobile marketing contexts. As a marketer, you can directly engage your audience
either by having its members reach out to you, or vice versa.

Within the indirect context, you can interlace mobile marketing within your tra-
ditional and new media channels — including your website, magazine ads, and so
on — by adding mobile calls to action. For example, you may

» Offer a text alert service.

You can send participants updates on your programs in text messages. Create
a form on your website in which you ask participants to enter their mobile
phone numbers and opt in to receiving text messages from you. Or you may
invite them to join by asking them to text a specific code to a phone number
that you’ve set up to receive these messages.
If you would like to collect more data on your customers than their mobile
phone numbers (their preferences, for example), use the web form for opt-in,
including fields for the additional data you need, and add the customers to
your database. However, be aware that asking for such information may limit
participation in the program because people may not want to fill out the form
or provide much personal information.

» Ask for feedback or content.
Have participants take pictures of themselves using the product with their
mobile phones and send them to the community. Or you can ask them to
contribute their ideas about the name for your next product, or give a
shout-out to a friend.

» Remind participants to share.
Encourage users to share rewards from a program, such as a coupon offer,
with their friends.

342 PART 5 Old Marketing Is New Again with SMM