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In today’s dynamic and fast-evolving world, it is perhaps very important to be able to reach customers spread across the world at any given time. New digital marketing channels, such as Internet and mobile phones are considered to be among the powerful opportunities to reach consumers. To understand mobile advertising as a method of targeted, permission-based, context-driven marketing, which is on its way to yield great results, SDA India interacts with Mr. Chirag Jain, vice president- India Operations at Webaroo.

Q: What is Mobile Marketing and why do you think we need Mobile Marketing?

C J : Mobile Marketing can be referred to one of the categories in marketing. Mobile marketing is particularly attractive in India because PC ownership remains low, which creates the need for an alternative interactive medium. Mobile advertising can fill this need by providing interactivity in a way not available with TV or print. Currently India has a robust market in rich media mobile content and value added service providers that can be deployed to local audiences. The combination of the technological capacity and market size means there is an opportunity to implement varied business and use models. Marketers need to adapt to this and have a long term strategy for the medium. Sooner or later there will be a crackdown on invasive marketing.

Q: How does mobile advertising work, could you explain with examples?

C J : Mobile advertising is an integral component of brand advertising. There is no other medium that offers substantial reach combined with precise targeting. Print and TV are too untargeted, Radio and Internet don’t yet have the reach in India. Brand advertisers can make sure their message reaches their specific audience, on a personal device, any time, very efficiently thereby increasing the effectiveness of their campaign.
Mobile advertising is very attractive to advertisers.

Q: What kinds of industries would be benefited with Mobile advertising and in what way?

C J : Mobile Advertising has expanded rapidly in Europe and Asia as a new channel to reach the consumer which is beneficial to Fast moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), Retail and finance companies, as well as Receiver/Consumer.

Q: What kind of mobile advertising guidelines have you set?

C J : Mobile advertising is almost uncharted territory. We have set examples in making this a viable and non-intrusive advertisement medium. In general the three guidelines we stick to are:
a) Contextuality – the Ad message is always in context to the message sent, the user history and demographics.
b) Non intrusive – Although we send millions of messages daily, not a single one of these goes from SMSGupshup. All messages are user generated and we insert inline ads
c) Advertiser Return on Investment (ROI) – All our campaigns are optimized for maximum advertiser ROI.

Q: Is it possible to measure the effectiveness of a mobile ad campaign and what are the various different parameters involved?

C J : When executed well, the mobile advertising campaign will draw the attention of targeted users. Since the ad message on SMS GupShup arrives on their personal device, anytime, anywhere, embedded in a group message, consumers are very likely to notice the ad.

Q: Mobile marketing requires customization of ad content to reach the target customers, in this case how do you think the privacy concerns of the customers could be secured?

C J : Our service is entirely user-driven i.e. we only forward messages from publishers to subscribers – we do not send any other messages. SMS GupShup messages are like personal messages which come from a trusted source, in this case, the group publisher. Furthermore, our service has features to let users easily join, leave, mute and block the messages – giving users greater control on what content to receive. SMS GupShup is strongly opposed to spam.

Q: Could you explain our readership about the economics of the mobile advertising?

C J : Mobile advertising should be an integral component of brand advertising. There is no other medium that offers substantial reach combined with precise targeting. Additionally, it will be used by lakhs of advertisers, small and large merchants, to do targeted advertising of their products and services using SMS GupShup.

Q: How do you respond to the consumer responsiveness, which is generally based on the function of content relevance?

C J : Customers always respond when there is value associated to the response. As stated earlier, one of the major value adds we provide is the Contextuality of ads to the messages. This optimizes the placement of ads and ensures higher responsiveness. In in-house ads we have seen much higher percentage of responses and genuine leads than other media.

Q: What are the challenges involved in managing a mobile marketing campaign?

C J : The objectives of campaigns are straightforward: increase brand awareness, generate a customer profile opt-in database, drive up attendance to events or visits to a store, improve customer loyalty and increase revenues. Mobile Marketing does not stand-alone; rather it leverages traditional promotional channels.

Q: Could you explain your business model and your future plans?

C J : Our business model is very simple – Provide users a very good social networking tool. Advertise / Monetize it without hampering the experience of the user. Our future plans are geared towards integrating newer technologies into the product, optimizing the medium for related monetizations.

Q: Could you name some of your competitors in the market?

C J : As of now there are no competitors who offer social networking over mobile. There are many Bulk SMS providers, but with the present TRAI regulations, they are not legal any more.

Q: How do you foresee the future of mobile advertising in India?

C J : Mobile Advertising in India is merely at the early stage of development. Over the next few years, both the devices and the networks will become faster, better and cheaper. This will enable new generations of mobile services enabling content, commerce, collaboration, messaging and so on in newer ways.