What’s a wireless advertising plan? Why should you consider wireless advertising? How can you put together a wireless advertising plan? This article addresses why and how to plan and implement an effective wireless ad campaign.
1. Determine your wireless advertising objectives
The number of people who use wireless devices (cell phones, pagers and PDAs) is growing throughout the world. Wireless advertising can allow your company to deliver a variety of different messages to this rocketing population of handheld users.
Wireless advertising is relatively new: the results on the kind of content that will be most effective for wireless advertising is not conclusive. However, content sponsorship, opt-in coupons and directories will likely be the most successful of the various wireless ad methods.
In determining your objectives, consider the target audience for wireless advertising: the wireless audience is highly likely to be high-income professionals who are on the go.
Some of the potential benefits of wireless advertising over traditional forms of advertising may include:
high recall and response rates brand awareness building
developing customer loyalty
reaching clients in a high-growth market sector
targeting high-income professionals
obtaining registrations
driving traffic to internet sites
shortening the time to purchase
generating new revenue streams through mobile commerce
Keep in mind consumer behaviors that you wish to modify and how you will measure the success of the wireless ad program. Some “soft” measures include: weight, branding, loyalty and message association, etc. “Hard” measures include: click through rates, purchases through unique toll free numbers, E-commerce on mobile phones, visits to brick and mortar stores, in-store purchases, etc.
2. Develop a company-wide wireless advertising strategy
Wireless advertising is still in its infancy: it’s important to develop a company-wide wireless advertising strategy that covers issues of security, privacy, standards and technologies.
Security Wireless devices are easily hacked or stolen. What methods can your company take to insure that the data provided to and from the wireless client is secure?
Privacy Like internet advertising, wireless advertising must also be “opt-in” and provide a measure of privacy to wireless ad recipients. Develop and publish your privacy statement for your wireless audience, and give them an opportunity to “opt out”. How will you protect the privacy of your audience? How will you protect a client’s personal information (name, address, phone number, email address, credit card numbers, etc.)?
Standards Currently, there is no universal standard for building and deploying wireless applications. The most noteworthy specifications are WML (Wireless Markup Language) and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). Also, there is no worldwide standard for wireless networks: for example, most of North America currently has a different set of wireless network standards than Europe. Which language and which network will you support?
Technologies Many types of wireless devices have been adopted by the masses. Three of the most popular devices include:
pagers with SMS (Short Messaging Service)
PDAs (Personal Digital Assitants) and
Wireless phones
Which technologies will your company support for its wireless advertising?
3. Determine which type of wireless ad you will produce
Text Ads Since wireless communication uses a low bandwidth, small message size is an important factor to consider for speed of download. Short, well-written text ads can convey powerful messages with very speedy download times. Text ads can be used for branding or information delivery.
Text Plus Image Consider that many wireless devices are not in full color: usually, an image is a simple black and white logo used for brand reinforcement or supporting the text message.
Click-Through Links An ad can be “clicked through” to a site that is especially formatted for wireless browsers.
Call-Through Links A wireless ad can allow a customer to automatically connect to a special toll-free number at your company. These types of ads can be effective for direct sales or special offers.
Timed Interstitials Your ad can be viewed while waiting for another page to load (between click throughs from site to site). These are usually impression ads for branding.
Interactive Ads An interactive ad lets the client click on the ad to find out more information about products and services without linking to a full-blown wireless website.
4. Identify a wireless ad producer.
You will need to produce the ad that meets your objectives and technology requirements. You may need to hire a firm that includes the services of a copywriter, artist, WAP or WML programmer and ad placement specialist.
If you have a click-through or linked ad, you may also need to program a special WAP or WML site. You may also want to program a part of your website to start a wireless subscription list.
5. Place your wireless ad.
After your ad is produced, it needs to be placed. Wireless content providers can place your ad within their content feeds. Popular content feeds include access to email, news, entertainment, stocks, weather and sports. You may also elect to provide your own wireless content, depending on your company’s wireless advertising strategy. Often, wireless subscribers may “opt in” at your company website.
6. Measure the success of your wireless advertisement placement.
In developing your wireless ad objectives, you determined some of the factors for determining the success of your wireless advertising. Now is the time to quantify your success factors. Your wireless content provider will be able to give you a report on the number of impressions your ad received.
If one of your measures is “click-throughs”, you should also use the web log analysis tool that is in place at your site. If one of your measures is “call-throughs” or “call to sales”, you should assign a special toll free number to measure the number of calls, and instruct your sales agents or operators to record the number of leads and sales they received because of the wireless ad placement.
You may also wish to employ in-store surveys if one of your ad objectives was to increase visits to a real-world store or to lead to real-world purchases.
Laura Bergells is an internet attraction and distance learning specialist. To learn how to be extremely attractive, visit www.maniactive.com to learn more about “attraction vs. promotion.”
