Tailor-made mobile marketing for SMBs

BANGALORE, INDIA: The rapid growth of mobile technology has offered new possibilities to enterprises. Smartphones create enormous opportunities for businesses to engage with customers. For SMBs, which have a smaller customer base with big chains, it's all about keeping connected and actively engaged.

It's time to make the most of mobile now!

A lot of SMB owners shy away from mobile because they perceive it to be complex or time-consuming. What they need to keep in mind is that for their business, mobile is simply another marketing channel to reach your customers.

According to a survey from marketing charts, 7 out of 10 SMBs will spend 25 percent more on mobile media in the coming year.

Himanshu Khanna, head of enterprise products, Tata DOCOMO, said "Hosted Campaign Manager (HCM) from Tata DOCOMO is ideal for aggregators, FMCG, service industry, media and banking and insurance companies. In the SME segment it would be most beneficial for outsourcing companies, advertisement agencies and campaign and event management companies. It will allow enterprises and SME customers to make hundreds of phone calls instantly and simultaneously."

He also shares, "through voice blast feature, customers can send a pre-recorded message to thousands of phones from a targeted dialing list. The HCM hosted at Tata Teleservices data centre will provide a Voice Blast service by simultaneously dialing the target clients and playing pre-recorded message over the telephone. The service also provides scrubbing of dialing number against Do Not Disturb list, before making a call. Using the Web interface the customer can upload voice files to be played to end clients, Upload dialing list (target numbers), Schedule Campaigns and Extract Reports."

"This service will be available in Karnataka, Mumbai & Maharashtra, Kerala, UPW, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kolkata and West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, UP East and Hyderabad," he said.

The dominance of internet and mobile is immense. Today's marketing ways have transformed. New trends of marketing have arrived. The world is getting connected through technology and we get to know things at our finger tips, by just one click.

There are lot of channels, today to reach the target groups. It's no surprise that SMBs choose the best and economy channel for marketing. For example, social media is 'trending' in a big way.

Similarly SMBs need to adapt to the new marketing strategies to meet their potential customers.

Mobile apps for SMBs

Making payments through mobile is another potential platform for SMBs. Smartphones and tablets as a part of daily business activity, foster the usage of mobile devices. Mobile payments are just one example. SMBs make and receive payments.

With the advent of mobile payment options, the usage of mobile for different payments, clearly projects the demand and necessity. Adding to this, Apple has released their version of the mobile payment - Passbook - with the new iPhone offering. One such example for the advent of mobile technology.

Edvin K Varghese, Founder & CEO, Appface Technologies Pvt Ltd, said: "Mobile Marketing is cost effective and is targeted at a group or an individual customer. Mobile Apps facilitate faster decision making and help brands to reach into the pockets of their prospective clients. We at Appface Technologies have developed a Mobile App for Real Estate Market. All customers who buy apartments, villas etc will be able to track the progress of the construction in the Mobile App.

He also added, "Some of the early adopters of the Mobile App in Bangalore include Legacy Group, Daadys Builders, and Mantri Developers. The Real Estate App Product that we have built is a great marketing tool for builders as well as a great way for customers to connect with the Builder. The Mobile App brings more transparency and clarity into the Real Estate Transactions. We are currently collaborating with builders and developers all over India for launching Mobile Apps for their respective brands."

James Thomas, Country Manager, India operations, Kronos said: "With India being the fastest-growing mobile subscriber markets, Workforce Mobile Manager and Workforce Mobile Employee is a path-breaking solution by Kronos into the Indian market to transform the way organizations engage their workforce in instant engagement and guided decision making for workforce effectiveness and productivity. Kronos Workforce Mobile applications reinforce Kronos' innovative workforce management applications for the next-generation employee and manager in ease of use and flexibility."

He said "the Mobile Manager Application allows managers to use their mobile devices to monitor operations, to resolve exceptions, and to respond quickly to employee requests, such as approving timecards and granting time-off requests. On the other hand, the Mobile Employee Application enables employees to track their work in real time, leading to the automatic creation of timely and accurate timesheets. Employees can quickly review information such as schedules and timecards."

Mr. Satya Prabhakar, Founder & CEO, Sulekha.com says, "Mobile marketing has opened a whole new world for SMBs to reach customers in a cost effective manner. Till some time back the major source for advertising for SMBs was the print media. This was a costly proposition for most SMBs to attract customers. Sulekha.com has been a pioneer in helping SMBs reach out to customers using the mobile platform. Any customer, who fills in the details of a service, within seconds is given a list of all the relevant businesses within the specified location on his mobile. The customer's details are also passed on to the relevant businesses, Insurance, personal loans by local agents, real estate agents, coaching classes, security services, computer services, web design services, tax consultants etc. who in turn call the customers to better understand the requirement and provide an immediate quote. Thus helping the SMBs acquire customers.

He also feels, "Local retailers, Showrooms are best suited to leverage mobile marketing tools." Tools like Push SMS are helping SMBs reach customers specific to their location and also target a specific target audience profile.

Mobile technology is important to the future of their business and practical apps like these are a good start so that small businesses have more choices about the technologies that can give them a strategic advantage.

Have you started Mobile-ing in your enterprise? Let us know how.