Mobile - Centric Marketing

Bands continually find their way to Adva Mobile for mobile websites and Apps, and discover something else – a marketing platform to acquire fans, engage them and sell to them. That’s marketing (at least the acquire and engage parts). Mobile marketing has become one of the most popular ways to promote your band to your fans. It works when fans opt in to receiving text messages from you and by you sending messages to your fans mobile phones. This can be a great way to find and keep fans buying since studies have shown that people pay far more attention to messages on their phone than they do to things like email. That being said, mobile marketing is just a small part of the total process of making sales. You have to integrate mobile into your total marketing campaign.

Just so you know, mobile, as our way of understanding, reaching and engaging with fans, is the life-giving sun around which we craft the orbit of our marketing campaigns. And the idea that mobile marketing for musicians is the most likely candidate to become the beating heart of your brand will soon be self-evident. 

That’s the message of big brands today. And it’s coming to small businesses, and Artists. 
Just like the big brands recognize:  The promise of persistent availability, the promise of personal treatment and instant outcomes, real-time targeted fan benefits. The at-your- fingertips quality of a whole new kind of always-on Artist – fan experience. 

I remain astonished that the music industry continues to fret over whether “mobile” is really about CRM more than it is acquisition, or “mobile” is simply an additive media channel, or how “mobile” is really about applications (sigh …). 

Artists that “get it” are transforming their brands themselves, as all around us a single, stunning fresh fact of life becomes clearer every day: mobile is changing everything.

If you are responsible for marketing your band, I propose you need to pay a new-found attention to something you may have been missing completely: the simple yet profoundly insightful behavior of people interacting with their mobile phones – and each other.  

Real marketing seeks to attach to the existing behavior of your fans by offering up and inserting perfectly placed instants of value, maybe even magic, into the mix of mobile behaviors currently in play with your fans. 

This article proposes it is time to not simply move mobile onto center-stage of our Artist to fan relationships. It is time to completely rethink the nature and effect of every inch of your brand within the context of mobile. 

The context of ubiquity and transparency. The context of near-frictionless distribution and reach of message and content. The context of empowered devices in the hands of people already transforming their lives in ways that could never have been foreseen. 

The context of stronger Artist to fan relationships, that lead to paying fans.

Some Great Press about the Adva Mobile Launch

HTML5 ARTICLE
March 22, 2013
Adva Mobile Relaunches Free Mobile Sites Helping Musicians Connect with Fans
By Steve Anderson , Contributing TMCnet Writer

While the music industry has changed somewhat in the last few years, with some acts emerging to earn livings strictly from their own efforts, one key point in the concept is still the sheer power of marketing. For Adva Mobile, offering a little help on that front looks to be at the head of the list, and to that end, it's recently undergone a complete redesign and an accompanying re-launch of its mobile sites and its primary website as well.

It's not just aesthetics that brought Adva Mobile to change its sites up; it was also a point of improving functionality. Following the original launch of Adva Mobile, some believed that the feature set was certainly worthwhile--especially for a free offering--but the design needed some help. To that end, Adva Mobile launched a crowdfunding effort in late 2011 geared toward getting cash in on a redesign. With that proving successful, Adva Mobile could then turn its attention to not only a redesign, but also toward adding extra features.

The mobile sites, for example, are all now built in HTML5, making them accessible from any mobile device, while also allowing them to be distributed as native apps on the main app stores, still where many get their apps. That's a great start, but the Adva Mobile platforms also boast SMS text messaging at no charge, as well as a text messaging system that's part of the analytics features.

This allows for an interesting scenario that starts when a fan sends a certain text message to get access to the band's material. The incoming number associated with the text message is stored as part of the artist's own database, which can then be re-used to send followup messages and identify those users who send in. Fans that buy content are also logged accordingly so they can receive further messages about the band's operations and about any new content to follow.

What's more, artists can start to identify "core fans" based on the activity logged, and in turn start providing special incentives for these important parts of any musician's career. This kind of "fan engagement," as it's often called, can help bolster a career.

Though many of Adva Mobile's services are available at no charge, some advanced functions are available on a for-pay basis. Adva Mobile offers a set of e-commerce services at no charge, with artists setting prices for digital content that is then fulfilled with a 10 percent fee. Basic designs are free, and custom designs are available at $1000, with a wider range of designs expected available in the future. Adva Mobile will even handle the submissions process on HTML5 mobile Web apps for a $400 setup fee and $500 per year, or $50 a month.

Adva Mobile has a lot of room to build outward, and the best part is that it already has a sound stock of features to begin with, thus any development it does will simply be augmenting what looks to be an already solid experience. Good marketing is central to any artist's career. It's never enough to simply have a good painting or a good sculpture or a good story or a good song; if no one hears it, sees it or reads it, what good, inevitably, is it? Part of art is its impact on other people, and without that impact, art is largely useless. Adva Mobile looks to put marketing more in the hands of artists, and in turn, get more art out in front of people.




Edited by Brooke Neuman



http://www.html5report.com/topics/html5/articles/331525-adva-mobile-relaunches-free-mobile-sites-helping-musicians.htm

Adva Mobile Portal Launch Press Release

March 15, 2013

Musicians Gain Fans and Revenue With New Adva Mobile Marketing Portal 

Driven by Feedback from Artists and Labels, the new Mobile Marketing Portal is more efficient, relevant and useful

Adva Mobile, the leading mobile marketing portal for Artists using mobile technology to acquire, engage, and sell to fans, delivered a redesigned website and Artist portal today, aimed at helping Artists connect to fans on mobile devices more efficiently. The new design - over a year in the making, with teams from Argentina, Pakistan, India and the US – includes improvements in how Artists reach fans on mobile phones and integrates mobile commerce into their fan engagement efforts. 

The improvements to the Adva Mobile Portal were largely driven by requests from Artists and Labels, who seek to take advantage of unprecedented new opportunities to create loyalty and drive sales through the mobile channel. In addition to the new design, increased functionality was added, including enhancements to the Artist Mobile Store to help digital sales direct to the fan and new capabilities through HTML5/CSS3 – for example, an embedded music player.

Jack Kelly, Adva Mobile CEO, oversaw the redesign and directed the international teams that designed the new website, Artist portal user interface, and new Artist mobile sites and Hybrid Apps. “This should be a huge advantage for our Artist users who will benefit from a better experience as they manage their mobile outreach efforts. Fans will also appreciate the new, clean designs of Artist mobile sites & Apps and new features that engage them with their favorite bands.”

Regarding the new site design, Kelly said “It has a great look and feel. The portal is more personalized and easier to navigate. For example, the new Dashboard is organized to simplify the Artist’s management of their fans, mobile assets, campaigns and activity analytics.” Artists using the new platform have found it more useful, fun, helpful and relevant.

In addition to simplifying the Artist Portal experience, new mobile web and Hybrid App template designs provide a better experience for the fan. Fans that opt in to the Artist site receive personalized experiences that become more relevant as the fan increases his or her engagement with the band.

“We have been aggressive in acquiring new Artists and helping them use our platform to make money.” Kelly said. “Still, I always want to go faster.”

About Adva Mobile
Adva Mobile is a marketing services and technology company dedicated to helping Touring Bands, Recording Artists, Labels and music industry professionals reach, market and sell to their fans on mobile devices. More information can be found at www.advamobile.com

Adva Mobile Launch News – The New Website

We started this project knowing that we needed a new design for the Artist Portal and mobile websites/ Apps that drive the Artist -- fan relationship. But it was easy to see that the design of the portal would drive an entirely new Website.


We are really pleased with the new Website because it is simple and elegant. For most of the people who access the Website, they are Artists that use Adva Mobile and what's most important to them is an easy login. For those Artists that are not yet Adva Mobile users, and everyone else who is interested in learning what we're all about, the site is minimalist but provides a good overview of what we offer and our philosophy for helping Artists.

So, the bulk of this year-long effort has been to make the Artist portal an easy and attractive platform for managing fans, mobile content, and marketing campaigns so that Artists can have a more personal relationship with their fans. The website is a nice introduction to that concept.

Adva Mobile Launch News – The Dashboard

The Dashboard is the most important new page on the portal because it directs you to all of the activities of the Adva Mobile marketing system for Artists. But we really need to hear from you about whether it works for you, and how we can continually make improvements.

Artists, especially those managing their own fan outreach efforts, don't always know what to use mobile for, so the Dashboard starts with a simple HELP suggestions that tell you what you're supposed to do. The top navigation headers for both Account Management and Mobile Site Design are straightforward, and the Quick Links can be an easier navigation tool for the Artist to get to exactly where they want on this portal.

We especially hope that the Message Board will be a communications tool between Adva Mobile Artists to share best practices that work for them, and also to talk to us. The Dashboard is a really important new feature of the Portal, and we’re always looking for your insight about how to make it better. Let us know.

Adva Mobile Launch News - While We Were At It

The redesign of our entire platform -- our Website, the Artist Portal, and the Artist Websites/Apps -- was a major project. A number of new features were also added and really are to the benefit of Artist -- fan relationships.

One feature that was really fun to add was the result of the progress that HTML5 has made. Our Artists told us that, when a fan wants to play some of their music, we would send them away from the Artist website and open the music player that was part of the mobile phone operating system. ITunes player, for example. And this wasn’t supporting the Artist goals. But with HTML5, you can now embed a music player right into a mobile website. So we did that, and it's really a much better experience for the fan.

Another cool new feature is digital sales. Now, Artists can sell their songs directly to their fans, and unlike iTunes & Amazon, know exactly which fans made a purchase.

We think Amanda Palmer has it right -- it's not about figuring out how to get your fans to buy your music. It's about letting your fans buying your music. And that includes making it easy for them to purchase your products on mobile.

Adva Mobile Launch News – Why Mobile at all?

I am a big fan of Theodore Levitt. He was a Harvard professor who wrote about marketing principles, primarily in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Very famous. One of his famous quotes is that, when buying a drill bit, people do not want a quarter inch drill bit. They want a quarter inch hole.

Same with Artists. You do not want a mobile website. You do not want an iPhone App. You do not want an Android App. You want engaged fans who will support you with their money.

When we went about creating Adva Mobile, we thought that the mobile environment could provide a new capability for Artists to sustain their careers by connecting with fans in a very personal way that was only available through the mobile ecosystem. So, building a platform to provide this toolset for Artists was our mission. We started with Mobile Web because it was a platform available to every fan. Today, the advances of HTML5 are such that the experience of the fan on a Mobile Site is equivalent to the experience of a fan on an App. 

The platform you use to manage your mobile strategy is a single platform that propagates to your mobile site, your Android App, and your IPhone App, simplifying your marketing management. The strategy provides confidence that all of your fans get a terrific experience when they are experiencing you on a mobile phone. Your mobile marketing program can be cost-effectively across all of the platforms because you are not paying for individual development over multiple platforms. 

The endgame, of course, is that you don't care about Mobile Web, Android Apps, iPhone Apps, or marketing platforms. You don't want quarter inch drill bits, you want quarter inch holes. You care about your fans and your relationship with your fans.