Adva Mobile Launch News - OK …. We Learned

OK, We Learned …. You really need a mobile website and App that is beautiful to look at and that you are proud of and want to show to your friends and your fans.

The new mobile sites we are offering for Artists who take advantage of our Free level are elegant, modern and visually attractive. They're designed to give your fans a terrific user experience when they engage you on a mobile phone and we want your mobile site to help you create loyalty with your fans and engage them in ways that will let you sell to them. For these emerging Artists, we offer our Free platform with a visually attractive mobile website and a very comprehensive marketing toolset to help you attract, engage, and begin a mobile commerce relationship with your fans.

For Artists that are making money and need a more comprehensive strategy, our Plus service ads Android and iPhone Apps so that you are everywhere mobile is and can demonstrate that you are hip with mobile. Not all of your fans are smart phone users, but some of those who are want an App experience.

Brand conscious Artists want to move beyond the very slick templates that we offer for mobile website and App Design to a mobile strategy that maintains their Brand across all of their digital platforms. We provide these Artists customized HTML5/App designs and these can be anything that you imagine.

Check out what we can provide you at www.advamobile.com

SMS Horrors

Coca-Cola Co. is being sued for allegedly sending unsolicited spam text messages to thousands of individuals without prior consent, violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

The class action complaint cites one example wherein a consumer allegedly received a text message with a scoreboard update from a football game between the University of Alabama and Louisiana State University (LSU) informing him to vote for one of the teams.  After the consumer placed his vote, he received an additional unsolicited text message with a Coke Zero ad.
According to the complaint, Coca-Cola used marketing firm Mozes Inc., to send unsolicited advertisements for its products, thus violating the TCPA.  The TCPA forbids companies from reaching out to people on their phones using a mechanical dialing system or prerecorded message without their prior permission.
Here at Adva Mobile, we are insanely protective of you're fan's privacy and, when a fan texts in to your band name keyword (by texting GETLyasia to 88704, for example), the only text that can be sent to that fan is from Lyasia. 
Text services from Adva Mobile are a powerful tool for you to use to reach and engage your fans. It's a very regulated world to play in, and the Adva Mobile service has undergone strict review to be approved by the wireless carriers. This story is a good example of what happens when it all goes wrong.
 Sending SMS from the Adva Mobile service is set up to comply with all these carrier rules. And your fan info is secure - and only available to you. We've got your back.

12 on 12-12-12

You only get the opportunity to post a blog like this once every 100 years, so here are Twelve Great Things about mobile technology and mobile marketing happening on Adva Mobile.

1. The New Portal is almost ready to launch
We're weeks away from launching the most powerful mobile technology and marketing service available.
2. Twelve New Artists on the AM Platform
Jeff Bujak, Traumavic, JaLonBlacc, Bluemarch, Jimmie Van Zant, The Heritage, Niloy Phukan,  ROCKET McFLYY, The Deadly Strawberry,  Calypso Toad,  Terror Alert Elevated, The Suspense
3. Digital Content for Sale
The new platform will let you upload your music / videos, set your own price, and sell to your fans right on their phones
4. Hybrid Apps
By wrapping your mobile web site in our iPhone and Android App wrappers, you can manage your mobile assets across all platforms through one CRM  
5. More Detailed Fan Info
The new platform provides even more info about your fans so you can target your superfans with special offers.
6. Sneak Preview of the Portal
You can check out what's coming right now http://prezi.com/tduzbii7rd43/sneak-peek-the-new-adva-mobile-portal/
7. Contests & Voting 
The new portal helps you engage your fans with contests on their phones where they can win things, and a voting game where they can vote for their favorite  ... (whatever!)
8. Adva Mobile Homepage Contest
Here's a game - go to the Sneak Preview and the last "slide" is the new home page. Tell us who the artists are by sending an email to info@advamobile.com and you'll win a prize. (We'll figure something out.)
9. Cool New Mobile Web Designs
When the new portal launches, you'll have two new very cool designs for you to choose from (and more on the way!). 
10. Your Own Mobile Store
Digital, physical, bundles  .... sell direct to fan on your own mobile store - and keep the list price $$.
11. More fans in 2013
Here's to more fans, loyal fans, and more money for you in 2013 with the help from the Adva Mobile platform.
12. Tom Brady - #12
Coincidence? I don't think so!

HAVE A GREAT 12-12-12 EVERYONE!!

How well do you know your fans?

Oftentimes you'll hear people say that the purpose of business is to make money, but that's not true. Making money is the result of a business, and it's essential to keep a business going. But it's not the purpose of business. The purpose of a business is to attract and retain customers. For musicians in the business of making money, your business purpose is to attract and retain fans.

Not all fans are equal, however. You need fans that will buy your music and merchandise, and pay to come to your shows. Your "Superfans", or "1,000 True Fans", whatever. What's difficult, besides making great music and just getting fans, is knowing exactly who these fans are so you can personally reach out to them.

I propose that mobile technology provides a solution to this problem better than any other marketing tool available to musicians.

Check out this screen capture:

(We blocked out the email addresses and names because, hey, it's a real list!!)

This is a fan database from an artist on the Adva Mobile platform. It provides their phone number (for reaching them via our SMS Text Service), and their email address  (for sending them email marketing, either through our service or your own email service like Constant Contact, Mail chimp, or Fan Bridge), details about their age, gender and location. Also, the number of page views of your mobile site / App for that fan. It's incredibly useful to know that two fans on this page (circled in RED) have visited you mobile site pages 204 and 106 times since they joined your site. Those fans are checking you out all the time!!

Mobile can provide so much more, however. Here's another screen capture from our soon to be released new portal, showing enhanced fan data (again, real info, so the name is blocked).

With this information, you can learn more about your fans, how they engage you on mobile phones, and what they are interested in. You can target them precisely - even individually - and you can expect great results from your efforts to market and sell to them.

Mobile is a new world of fan engagement and the ability to data mine fan information and behavior on your mobile site and App will improve your ability to make money with your music.

Postscript:

From Jonathan Ostrow and Music Think Tank

Back in November 2010, Jonathan Ostrow  wrote a blog titled "How well do you know your fans?". It was picked up and re-published by Music Think Tank - you can read it again here. It's a decent attempt to categorize fan types to help Artists spend time cultivating fans that really matter. I remembered this article when I was writing the article above, about what Adva Mobile was doing to help Artists figure out who their best fans were.  Enjoy!

Successfully Growing Your Mobile Fan Base

Take a look at these two charts. They are fan growth statistics from the same Artist, successfully growing their mobile fan base by promoting their mobile site and Apps at shows, on posters and their social media. The charts tell a very instructive story about the effort needed to steadily grow your fan base.

This chart was captured last year around the end of September 2011. The Artist joined Adva Mobile in March 2011 and we spent time creating and organizing the mobile site, building the Apps, and preparing for the launch. When the mobile site was announced in June, there was an immediate rush of fans who joined their site, and a steady growth of fan signing up throughout the year. This chart shows they had about 350 mobile fans after about four months of promotion.

This is a capture of the fan growth chart for the same Artist about two weeks ago. It's very instructive about growing your fan base. This Artist, through a combination of not touring and not promoting their mobile site and Apps, saw fan growth stagnate for the first half on 2012, and then dramatically grow to over 1800 fans once they started telling fans to connect with them on mobile phones.

Growing your fan base takes a consistent effort -it's not hard, but you have to do it every time you're in front of an audience, and regularly post that fans can connect with you on their mobile phones. This Artist has a fan base that is energized about them and regularly engage them on mobile, and can market to these special fans with show tickets, merchandise and music.

HTML5 Frameworks and Hybrid Applications

The one and only solution to develop a native App that runs on different platforms is to develop a separate native application for each different platform, with proper interface, and a specialist developer with skills for the operating system and coding language. Contrast that development environment with an HTML web application that can be read by any phone that includes a web browser.

However, there are some applications that need both:

The ability to be used on any OS- Android, IOS, Windows, Blackberry, etc.
The ability to access Smartphone or Tablet native features, such as microphone, camera, calendar, contact list, accurate geo-location, etc.

In these circumstances, it's possible to use an intermediate solution - hybrid applications.

A hybrid application is based upon the same technologies as web applications - the code is built using standard HTML, CSS and Java Script. Thus, it has the same performance and qualities as web applications.

The code is then incorporated into "frameworks" that allow access to native features of the operating system.

Therefore, like a native application, a hybrid application can access all the hardware devices (camera, microphone, GPS, etc.) and be listed on the corresponding Store. Moreover, a hybrid application takes advantage of its HTML code - easy to update, develop, there's greater design responsiveness, and has long term stability regarding the language used.

There's an argument to be made about whether a musicians app needs to access any of the capabilities of a native OS. The web apps and hybrid apps developed by Adva Mobile in our upcoming HTML5 releases include an HTML5 music player, so even the music player of the smartphone isn't needed. This design choice gives us the flexibility to access native OS capabilities as new requirements for Artist - Fan engagement arise, but for now, we're hard pressed to find a feature on a smartphone that's needed by an Artist to acquire, engage and monetize your fan base.

Thoughts?

Content That's Worth Paying For

I found this terrific INFOGRAPHIC that explains a shift in our buying behaviors.  For the preceding decade, content has been available for free online, both legally and illegally. But people are now buying content because technology is making content more convenient, attractive, relevant and emotional. From iTunes to Amazon, from Netflix to the New York Times.


The infographic is really an advertisement for an upcoming trade show / industry event put on by Business Insider. It's relevant to Adva Mobile Artists because monetizing your mobile fan base has always been the cornerstone of the mobile marketing platform we offer. Here's what the infographic says about content purchases, and how it relates to your Adva Mobile marketing platform:

1. Paying for Content is more convenient: We'll pay for flexibility across devices. We've learned to make micropayments, and pay from our phones. The Adva Mobile Storefront makes it easy for fans to purchase your digital content and physical goods right on their phones. 

2. It's Attractive: the visual web is here, so we can see what we're buying online. Freemium models have taught us to accept higher quality when we pay. The Adva Mobile Storefront lets you distinguish between content you want to give away and content you want to sell, and images associated with the product are presented on your store.

3. Your Content is more Relevant: Your data is everywhere. But options for your fans are scarcer as the big content providers scale back their free services. That gives Adva Mobile Artists more power to engage fans with free and paid for content and products, tailoring bundles to drive revenues. 

4.   We're buying on Emotion: With so much information, and the deluge of choices, we choose purchased based upon how they make us feel. Your Mobile connection to your fans is personal to them and their phones are always with them.

Although mobile purchases are billions of dollars today, we're just at the beginning of a revolution that will see more purchases being made using your mobile phones. Adva Mobile Artists can take advantage of this trend -whether through linking to iTunes and Amazon or using your Adva Mobile Direct to Fan Storefront. Every Artist should have items for sale on their mobile site and Apps.

You can see the infographic in more detail at  http://www.businessinsider.com/infographic-content-40-and-ignition-2012-8#ixzz24ORjyS3c