Is Mobile Marketing The Best Direct Marketing Channel For The Youth?

The title will surely get you thinking.  Being that we here at Call Loop we are focusing a lot of our attention on the mobile industry. Because of this we are on the pulse of what is converting the best in our own marketing marterial and learning a lot about the statistics that are coming out surrounding mobile.If you are a forward thinker then you are aware that the generations coming up now are not prone to marketing messages by email and rarely use their email address. To test this assumption please ask someone you know that is in college or younger and ask them how they communicate with their peers.  The answer you will likely get is that they use:

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Younger Generations Interaction Is Through :

• Texting – The average youth is spending a tremendous amount of time texting everyday. For more on these stats view a very informative infographic from Labs42.com
• Social Networks – Mostly this is seen inside of Facebook. So if trying to reach them through email, it is a much better strategy to send them messages to their Facebook email, not their main email accounts.

So knowing this how do we get in front of them?

That is a question that has many answers but mostly it all comes back to mobile.

So how much do the younger generations interact with their phones for texting?

Over 11% say that they send 200 texts a day!!  33% say they send 100 texts a day!!  – Side note I hope they have unlimited texting plans 🙂

With all of this interaction, this is going to be the marketing channel of choice without a doubt.  Reason is because first text message open rates are 100% and because the response time is usually within the first 5 minutes at latest the first hour.

That is testament that we are moving faster as a society, to be able to process more info and still manage our lives….somewhat functionally.

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Then second if you have a smart phone, nothing is more annoying than seeing the little red number on your phone saying you have a text message.

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“Ok, Brett I get it so what should I do to get in touch with these youngsters?”

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If you are marketing is geared towards the youth, there are ways to go about getting to them and actually have interaction. They have all the information they need but a lot of times it is that they don’t know the best way to process it all.  If you have a service or a product that has a lot of benefits that will help younger people you can get them to text you to become part of your database so to send messages that will provide quality information that they will enjoy.

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Enter The Pig In The Room

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A good example of this is the campaign that was done by Feed The Pig. They provide quizzes and little tid bits of information that people can digest in a text message.  People can become familiar with their brand and in time come to look forward to the little bit of information that they are providing.  I am still trying to figure out where they are trying to lead you into a sale or some sort of marketing material, but they haven’t yet.  They take their time and provide quality and build up that trust relationship with the cell phone owner.

This Is The Strategy To Market To The Youth:

• Provide quality info, encourage interaction with them (quizzes, multiple choice questions)
• Then build into their trust.  In time they might even save your short code so that they know that it is coming from you, if you get to that point you are part of their network.

The cool thing is this is a new way to go viral mobilely.  I forward the quizzes to my friends to see if they can get the answers correct or if I am just not that smart about money.  But what happens is the end up subscribing and being apart of their database.  Genius if you ask me.

Brett’s Get To The Point Moment:

To get the attention of the youth you need to be thinking mobile.  Doing things that interact with them and gets them to trust your brand.  Ideally you have to be creative with getting them to start the process but that is specific to each situation.

PS: If you are interested in learning more about how to do this, please leave a comment and start some interaction and we will get back to you fast.  If you have your opinion please also leave a comment and will get back to you asap.