Mobile Marketing to Emerging Markets

Call any of your Hispanic friends at home and there is a good chance you’ll be calling them on their cell phone. A recent study by the National Center for Health Statistics shows that the Hispanic population is more likely than any other population to have dropped their traditional “land line” phone in favor of a cell phone. At the end of December 2006, 15.6% of Hispanics had a cell phone as their primary phone. This was a 125% increase over the previous year. If that trend continues land line phones will be basically non-existent in the Hispanic population in less than 10 years. 11.6% of the Asian population now uses a cell phone as their primary phone. However, their rate of growth is even higher than Hispanics at 151% from 2005 to 2006.

Mobile Marketing managers must see this as a great opportunity. Marketing to emerging markets is very difficult, especially with current language barriers. Young Hispanic and Asian populations may speak English as their primary language, while migrant workers may speak only their native language. Therefore, where do we advertise? On Spanish speaking TV or radio stations? What about local Spanish newspapers? Mobile marketing may have the answer.

Since persons have to opt-in to most mobile marketing campaigns, the customer can be categorized somewhat by their initial response. Those opting into a campaign in Spanish will receive all of their communication in Spanish. The same holds true for English, Japanese, German or any other language. The customers just need to realize they can opt-in using their native language to receive custom marketing messages. The messages can also be altered to address the lifestyle of the customer. A Middle Eastern person is more likely to react to a message about Ramadan, rather than Christmas. Mobile marketing will offer us this opportunity while traditional broadcast media cannot adjust their messages based on customer response and interaction.

Mobile Marketing also solves one of the other problems associated with marketing to new emerging media. A study from OMD Worldwide states that when marketing to “multicultural audiences, one must be relevant”, and “doing it wrong is worse than doing nothing at all”. Ethnic populations “respond more positively to “multicultural cues such as ethnic characters, phrases and values, than ads that are generally just translations of general market ads”. Simply put, you write and produce the ad based on your target audience, not just the general public. Since mobile marketing has the ability to alter the message being sent to customers depending on their opt-in choices, it is a good choice for marketing to minorities.