3G and Nigeria Brands

Mobile Marketing is used to describe marketing or a mobile device, such as a phone. Mobile allows brands that have relied on traditional channels to create a more direct, the constant relationship with consumers. Mobile Marketing is yet to gain its presence in Nigeria, but with 3G networks to come, this will allow data intensive applications, Brand and advert agencies quickly see the opportunities in engaging the Mobile subscribers because of its uniqueness and interactivity.

South Korea is a classic example where mobile marketing is struggling. The largest network operator, SK Telecom, has about 500 customers, and controls 80% of the mobile advertising market in the country. AirCross pushes multimedia ads to about one million users have signed up, lured by reductions in their bills. It also has a database of four million SMS opt-in, even if multimedia is growing at a faster pace, having pulled in big advertisers like Coca-Cola, Mercedes and BMW since its launch last year.

The 3G Marketing is the next big thing in mobile services, but how prepared are network operators, owners of trademarks and brand marketers to move away from traditional media to mobile?

3G Marketing has the ability to reach mobile users in style and with richer content to mobile users. The content in many formats like video, sms, mms and audio, and now you can target mobile users. It will put the creativity of the brand manager for the task. Present Mobile marketing ecosystem in Nigeria is not buoyant with innovative services because the focus of mobile operators still tends towards Voice where 95 percent of revenue comes from earned. Mobile Marketing is still in its infancy, as brand marketers are not even experiencing what is currently available. Callback the caller and the marketing does not require Bluetooth technology is very complex, but still have yet to see a unique distribution throughout Nigeria.

The opportunities are immense and rewarding. More than 89 percent of Fortune 500 companies spend more than 10 percent of their marketing budgets to mobile marketing in the year 2008! The challenges for mobile marketing in Nigeria is tasking because most brand managers do not even understand the technology works. Influx of low-end phones also inhibit the growth and spread of 3G Marketing and will be the immediate obstacle to mass market 3G marketing because the user base is not sophisticated enough. Availability of 3G network in major cities will be a deciding factor if it becomes a means of marketing choice. Network operators are still struggling with capacity issues and 3G might not be some problems down the front burner in average revenue per user (ARPU) catchments, and by implication brand owners may never be able to implement a national campaign mobile marketing. Need to be managed regionally.

The road ahead for the 3G market is difficult because the issues present in Banda's intermittently. A key feature of 3G is its ability to provide high quality multimedia content, including streaming video with 3G subscribers can tune in for premium content such as cinema owners, and as Numetro silverbirds, showing film clips. Mobile ads can be transmitted along with a TV show and even mobile users can be directed to a website or WAP site that is dedicated to the announcement.

Network operators should also allow media agencies to access their database so that campaigns can be targeted based on segmentation of subscribers but where he can not afford that, then you may also have an in-house agency because without a segmented database, there would be indiscriminate messaging for mobile users based on an advertiser or publisher of the site and this could seriously damage the development of this potentially lucrative advertising market. The phone should not go in the direction of the Internet in terms of spam. The time to put the structure in place now .......