Mobile marketing goes chic with rise of smartphones, faster data access

MANILA, Philippines - Mobile marketing goes as hip and chic as the rise of smartphones and the faster, more accessible data services that give cellphone users all the flexibility to be online anytime, anywhere.

This trend is further fueled by the mobile broadband services of telecom carriers and the free Wi-Fi connections being offered by various commercial establishments.

And as cellular phones become more and more sophisticated with data access, mobile marketing is getting to be the best way to go to reach and capture what is emerging as a vast Internet-dependent network of now socially interconnected market of “buzzing travel bugs.”

This development makes text blasts the least that mobile marketing can do since new modes of getting in touch with the country’s 63.7 million cellphone users are increasing in just as many exciting and multi-sensory ways.

That number represents 70 percent of Filipinos who bring their cellphones anywhere they go, and many of them can watch even news, TV programs and canned videos with such handheld devices in real time.

“Traditionally, the mobile industry was driven by voice and SMS business. But with the evolution of carrier networks supporting more data-driven business, the consumers are now benefiting from richer media experience,” said Jose Manuel Fernando, director of the Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP).

“Access to content is driving the business. Since mobile phones now are more powerful and intelligent — at the same level of personal computers, if not even higher — people now use mobile devices to gain immediate access to information, social media and other digital content sources they normally experience on their personal computers,” Fernando said.

This phenomenon is consequently making the cellular phones the best medium for commercial brands to get their messages across such a huge mobile market in more innovative ways than one.

How brands can take advantage of this development is, in fact, the subject of a huge mobile marketing conference with the theme “The Market is Mobile: Can Your Brand Keep Up?”

Organized by the IMMAP and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Philippine Council, the conference is slated at the Hotel InterContinental in Makati City, on April 7-8.

“It (conference) will bring out the latest strategies, best practices, case studies, technologies and tools in mobile marketing through a long lineup of foreign and local experts as speakers. The outputs will enable participants to plan, develop, execute, and measure innovative mobile marketing campaigns,” said Fernando, also the conference chairman.

IMMAP president Hans Eric Roxas-Chua is urging all marketers, advertisers, entrepreneurs, content providers, brand managers, and executives of telecom companies, media agencies, consumer groups, small and medium enterprises, and other corporate entities to attend the conference.

They can inquire and register through Fiera de Manila Inc. by calling +632-896-0639, 896-0637 or 899-6893, e-mailing to [email protected] or logging on to www.mobilemarketingconference.com.ph or www.fmi.com.ph.