Mobile Marketing Grows, But Targeting Necessary (Reblogged)

We're sharing with you an insightful post by Bruce Houghton today on Hypebot. Smart targeting your fans is key to your success with keeping them engaged. It's even more critical on mobile than anywhere else, as your mobile alerts to your fans can be highly disruptive to them. Your disruption would be welcome if you're telling them news that's relevant to them, but you'd turn off your NY fans by repeatedly telling them about new gigs in Boston.

Adva Mobile's free Mobile Fan Club service provides tools not only to communicate with your fans, but also to collect information about them, so you can effectively target them in subsequent campaigns and promotions. We invite you to check out our Mobile Fan Club service, specifically the reporting portal and the fan blast tools.

Here's the original article, enjoy reading!

Mobile ad spending will grow 27% to $2.1 billion in 2010, according to the Mobile Marketing Association. But while the audience for mobile marketing is growing, it's still relatively small and confined to a limited segment of the market.

Marketers who employ mobile marketing to the wrong group risk turning them off according to an analysis of BIGresearch’s Simultaneous Media Usage Survey of over 22,000. Those who like mobile marketing tend to be young men. They are cell phone-centered and more likely to use social media. Those who don’t like mobile marketing tend to be slightly older women who are not as centered around their cell phone or social media.

Key Characteristics of Mobile Marketing Users and Non-Users:

                                                  Mobile Marketing        Mobile Marketing
                                                              Users                   Non-Users
Men                                                        57.9%                   46.2%     
Women                                                   42.1%                   53.8%           
Average Age                                            39.2                    45.9            
Online search triggered by cell                  17.4%                   2.4%
Communicate about search via cell            41.3%                   26.3%
Download music/video to cell phone           33.3%                   14.6%
Regularly Use Facebook                           37.9%                   27.8%
Regularly Use MySpace                           23.2%                   9.8%
Regularly Use Twitter                               13.1%                   3.5%

Hennessey Tour In-Venue fan opt-ins: 15%

From Mobile Marketer:
Cognac maker Hennessy integrated various mobile initiatives into its Hennessey Artistry music campaign to engage consumers and build a loyal community of fans.
“We were very pleased with the Hennessy Artistry experience as a whole and even more so with the way we were able to use and engage consumers via their mobile devices,” said Billy Paretti, vice president of experiential marketing at Moet Hennessy, New York. “We not only used mobile to engage our consumers pre-event but also activated contests and rewarded consumers during the actual shows.

Consumers could view, and download exclusive backstage and concert footage of historic collaboration performances by The Roots, Common, Boyz II Men, Big Daddy Kane and Q-tip directly to their mobile phones.

"The mobile campaign was core to the luxury brand’s desire to highlight and communicate its stronghold on the art of blending music, art, fashion, and event experiences"

The key?
...the SMS mobile call to action (text HENNESSEY to 56102), which was highlighted in print ads, point of sale collateral, a major social media blogging effort, as well as opting-in via the online widget which was placed on all the partner radio station Web sites in Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston and New York.

You can do it too
Your Mobile Fan Club offers your fans much more than just alerts: They can get content for their phones, tweet about you, join raffles and votes, buy stuff from you and much much more.
What do you need to do? promote, promote, promote your keyword+shortcode. Shout out during your gig, on your website, Facebook, MySpace, posters and anywhere else.

Your fans will thank you!

Adva Mobile Interview with Brimstone Radio

Earlier this month Brimstone Radio interviewed Jack Kelly, Adva Mobile CEO, about our Mobile Fan Club service. It was a fun session especially because after the interview we had live Q&A session with artists. We learn from this as much as you do, you know!

Here's the short version of the interview, you can listen to it here.

As always, if you have questions or comments, let us know!

Collection of Business News from the Mobile Entertainment Scene

Hi Everyone,
It's not every week that has been as exciting as the past week for whoever is following the Mobile Entertainment Scene. No, we're not going to spawn yet another feed of news links, there's plenty of those. But this week's news offer more evidence that reaching audiences on their phones is no distant future vision. Businesses invest $$ in their mobile strategy. As suggested before, it might be something you want to start experimenting with.

• Google buys AdMob for $750MM (AdMob is a Mobile Advertising network)
• Sony Music launches Michael Jackson Mobile Website
• IODA launches iPhone App (here's some of my thoughts)
• Last, check out eMarketer's report on Monetizing Mobile Content. Did you know that more than 30% of the US population accesses Mobile Websites at least monthly?  Whose mobile website are your fans visiting?

Whenever you're ready to experiment with your mobile fans, check us out!

Music Bloggers & Media: Early Preview of "Mobile Fan Club 2.0"

Hi Everyone!
Adva Mobile is preparing to announce our new service "Mobile Fan Club 2.0" in a couple of weeks. It's a superior set of features that enable artist to engage their fans on their mobile phones, better than ever.
Although being an outstanding Mobile Marketing Service for artists, it is still free and we invite artists, managers, promoters and anyone else in the entertainment space to check it out.

To highlight a few of those features:

• Rich media mobile website, now including Votes, Raffles, Gigs & Tickets, Merch, Exclusive content etc.
• Fan Blast tool, reaching fans via SMS, Mobile Email and Twitter, targeted by the fans' profile.
• Rich fan reporting portal with deep fan profiles.
• Monetization solution for content, tickets and merchandise, optimized for mobile.

For those of you in the music blogosphere or media, we offer you a unique opportunity to cover this announcement early. Please contact us if you're interested.

Announcing: Adva Mobile Live on the Air with Brimstone Radio

We're very excited to announce our first interview on Internet Radio with Brimstone Radio. Tune in on Tuesday Nov 3rd at 7PM EST to hear Brad Simmons from Brimstone interview Jack Kelly, Adva's CEO about Adva Mobile, our service, how we see musicians best use it etc. You can listen to the show by clicking here and click on "Listen Now".

The interview will be followed by a live Q&A session where Jack and Brad will discuss and answer any questions artists and/or fans may have about our Mobile Marketing Service, features, Mobile Marketing etc.
There are several ways to ask questions:

• Prior to the Show:
• On your PC:
• Send an email to livetalk@advamobile.com
• Tweet your question using @BrimstoneRadio, @advaMobile or or #ablive
• On your phone
• Visit Brimstone's Mobile website (SMS "getbrimstone" to 88704) and tweet from their tweet page
• During the Show:
• Dial 1(347)989-1683 to join the conference call where you can listen to the session and press "1" to ask your question
• Join the talk room by clicking here
• You can follow the Twitter stream by clicking here
• After the Show you can still Tweet or Email us, we will respond to you directly

For those of you who can't make this time, we will post a recording of the interview as well as the follow up Q&A session both on Adva Mobile site and on Brimstone Radio's site.

Participation is FREE, but since participation in the Q&A session is limited, we'd like you to please register here.

Adva Mobile joins 'Talking Mobile' Startup index

We're excited and honored to be covered by of one of the leading and respected mobile technology blogs, Talking Mobile. Talking Mobile, led by Harel Shattenstein, gathered a group of technology journalists and telecom professionals and we aim to bring a deeper coverage using our insight and perspective.

For mobile Music-As-a-Service, How Soon is Now?

GigaOm's blog publishes this morning an interesting article by Paul Bonanos on the topic of recent mobile music applications success. (GigaOm's blog is covering new technology and marketing).

According to them, the new Raphsody iPhone app has been downloaded 330,000 times since it's launch in Sep 9, making it the 2nd music app in iTunes store. However, only a minority of Raphsody's web subscribers used the iPhone app to stream music.

The question asked is: "are users finally ready to pay a monthly fee for ubiquitous access to a massive library of music?" (ie. pay extra to listen to music on their phone).

Here's their take:

"The burst of interest in Rhapsody’s app certainly reveals pent-up demand for mobile streams. Some consumers will surely be willing to pay for the chance to hear what they want, when they want, wherever they are. But many would still rather own their music, and some will be content with more restrictive, but free, options. It’s possible that the success of mobile streaming apps will mean that the music-as-a-service model’s time has finally come. We’ll know it has when people stop experimenting, and start paying."

What's that mean to you?

Well, we think your fans are mobile today. They certainly come to your shows and listen to your music in any way they can. They are following you, and "owning" the music you play just makes them "better" fans. that means, more money to you. But, as you well know, nobody pays for music anymore. Those days are gone, so we all had better think of alternative ways to make money. What are some of those channels? Tickets to gigs, merchandise and more. Yes, fans do pay at the door or pre-purchase tickets to your shows. They do buy your CDs, T-Shirts etc.

If you agree that you can excite your fans at the show, and get them to buy something right there, then the way to make money is through their phone, which is exactly what we provide, for free, at Adva Mobile.

Now is the time to get your own free mobile fan club, get started here.

CNN: it's harder than ever for artists to make a living selling CDs

CNN's Matt Rosoff has this article about the reality of selling music:

"More than 115,000 new albums were released in the U.S. last year. Of those, 110 sold more than 250,000 copies in the U.S. last year--that's not such a surprise, as big stars have always been rare. But only 1,500 titles cracked the 10,000 mark, and fewer than 6,000 sold a paltry 1,000 copies.

..Selling 900 CDs at $12 a pop would gross almost $11,000, which would be enough to cover low-budget recording and manufacturing expenses and perhaps buy some new guitar pedals and drumheads. Nobody makes a living selling 1,000 CDs.

What about 10,000 discs? If you're just starting out, making over $100,000 from CD sales sounds like a dream. Of course, you have to split that money among the band members, and anybody else who gets a cut, like the producer and manager. And if you're signed to a label, you might already be that deep into the hole for your advance and recording expenses, so forget about royalties and just hope they'll pay you an advance for the next one. At 10,000 copies, you're probably getting a little radio play somewhere, so you might earn a few small paychecks from publishing royalties, and if you've got a good live act and are willing to tour endlessly, you might be able to sell more tickets than CDs over the course of a year. So perhaps 10,000 is the low-end baseline for making a living playing music. (AR- reminder, only 6,000 of those sold in the US last year).

Of the new titles released last year, almost 99 percent of them didn't sell enough copies to let their creators earn a living from CD sales, and almost 95 percent of them didn't sell enough copies to cover the most basic expenses involved in their recording.

For an unknown band just starting out? Better polish those chops and gas up the van, then get ready to live on ramen noodles for a couple years. And don't worry about devaluing your recordings by selling them cheap or giving them away--worry about getting enough fans to hear them so they'll be interested in coming to your shows, and dragging a few friends with them."

Say no more, Matt. We're with you 100% there.

Adva Mobile gives you a FREE marketing tool to engage your fans on their phones, get them involved, bring them to your shows, and sell to them your tickets and merchandise. That's the way forward.

"It's no doubt a computer age. With sales of CDs dropping like flies and iTunes mp3s selling (sort of) like hotcakes, the shift into the interactive age seems to be exactly what the fans are after. As artists struggle to keep up with the times, its the ones that embrace the changing tide and the multiple outlets toward their fans via the smattering of successful technology-based services that will end up victorious in the end." Read the complete post

Mel ("Melismatic"), a "lifelong music fan" who covers talented musicians and innovative promotion services in her blog wrote this post about Adva Mobile's free mobile marketing service for musicians. "I guess you could say I was destined.", indeed!. Thanks Mel!

Coverage in Mobile Marketer and Mass High Tech

We got some nice coverage today with Mobile marketer and with Mass High Tech, check it out:

Music artists tap Adva Mobile’s mobile fan club service

Adva Mobile salutes independent artists with social network app