Channels Archives - BOLLYWOOD SURKHIYAN

Start a Small Retail Business with Multiple Sales Channels

Starting a small business with several sales channels maximizes your chance of success

In those tender first few years after you start your small business every sale is significant. It’s unfortunate that many entrepreneurs attribute a small start up budget with a single outlet for sales. In the past this may have been true. Few entrepreneurs had enough capital to open even a single store. Two or three stores in different neighborhoods was well beyond most budding entrepreneurs. Today, there is no end to the different sales avenues available to imaginative start up retailers, despite limited budgets.

Channel One: Start a small retail business with a mall kiosk

Don’t let the high cost of starting a bricks and mortar store keep you from making sales to live customers. An attractive kiosk can be purchased for less than a decent used car. Utility and Maintenance costs are also inexpensive. Mobility is an added bonus. If one location fizzles out you can always pick up and move.

Internet options may be less expensive to start up but they also take much longer to be noticed. Depending on your experience, they also take a lot longer to build. A well placed kiosk can be fully operational and generating income the moment you wheel it in the door.

Channel Two: Start a small retail business with an ecommerce site

Once you have your kiosk in place, you’re going to find yourself with a lot of free time between customers. You could spend this time talking to your neighbors or reading the newspaper. You could also boost your future sales potential by starting an online store.

Ecommerce sites can be created quickly but they do take time to fine tune. Once you’ve worked out all the bugs it may still be a while before many customers start to notice your small retail business. There’s no reason you can’t handle an ecommerce site from a notebook at your kiosk.

If you merely started an ecommerce site, you would have to wait months until your site was noticed or pay for expensive advertisements. Instead of sitting in your basement, frantically checking your server log, you could be positioned at your kiosk with an opportunity to speak face to face about your products, and hopefully sell some of them.

Not only can you continue making money while you start your ecommerce site but you also get a chance to promote it at practically no extra cost. Stamp your small business website address on your kiosk, shopping bags and reciepts. Be sure to mention the site to everyone that stops by your kiosk. Even offer a chance to browse, or beta test, your ecommerce site from your notebook.

Channel Three: Start a small retail business selling products on E-bay

E-bay and Pay-Pal take a hefty chunk out of your profit margin but E-bay still has some redeeming qualities. Almost any product you put onto their website will be noticed. In addition, once you’ve completed several transactions successfully your seller profile will indicate that you can be trusted. It takes a long time to build up trust for your ecommerce site. Like your kiosk, you can advertise your ecommerce site at no charge.

Unlike your kiosk and online store, your products can be sold on eBay with practically no startup cost. Also, there are a lot of savvy internet shopers that make online transactions exclusively through auctions. By opening up this third channel your potential customer base skyrockets!

India TRP Fixing: BARC Suspends Ratings for News Channels for 3 Months!

The technical committee of BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) has on 15th October 2020 suspended TRP (Television Rating Point) ratings for all English, Hindi and Regional news channels of India for 12 weeks or three months during which weekly ratings for individual news channels will not be published while the weekly ratings by language and state would continue. The period of suspension, as reports say, would be fully utilized by BARC to completely review and re-haul its sets of rules for calculating the TRP numbers, and thus would try to make the statistics of the biggest television rating agency of the world credible and trustworthy. Up to this point the rules were based on the viewing patterns of a sample of 40 thousand households or 180,000 viewers across the country through installation of people’s meter device in their TV sets, to determine the standards and patterns of nearly 200 million television viewing households or around 836 million viewers in India. President of the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) has welcomed the decision as a step in the right direction.
This decision comes in the wake of the TRP-fixing by a few news channels, the Republic TV most prominently. A complaint to this effect had been filed recently by BARC with Mumbai Police through Hansa Research Group. It was alleged in the complaint that the said channels are bribing families in whose television sets meters have been installed for collecting viewership data to tune in to the particular channels continuously. Accordingly, the Mumbai police commissioner held a press briefing in Mumbai to announces the start of investigations to probe the channels allegedly trying to manipulate TRP data to garner more advertisement revenues.
This development was also preceded by a few stormy months during which a few news channels had started media trials to convert the apparent suicide of a rising film star, Sushant Singh Rajput, into a murder conspiracy and accordingly, ‘investigative’ campaigns to howl for the blood the ‘accused’ along with slander campaigns to malign a number of cinema celebrities allegedly associated in the ‘murder’ angle and drug-abuse charges. The government of Maharashtra and Mumbai police were also vilified in the campaigns. Three premier investigative agencies were put into the scene to file charge-sheets and jail the ‘accused’, primarily named in the media trials, all for apparent political gains. At the moment, their investigations have almost petered out, none of them being able to justify the murder angle. In the month of October 2020 all the leading producers of the Hindi film industry, Bollywood, had filed a petition in Delhi High Court complaining against the media trials and slander campaigns by two prominent national news channels, the Republic and Times Now. In the meantime, to-watch-or-not-to-watch news channels has become an existential crisis for the common people of the country.
In fact, since the coming to power of the Hindu nationalist NDA government in India in 2014 and its aggressive push for a Hindu nation, the news channels and the Indian media had been increasingly getting polarized along ideological lines, with some pushing for agenda-oriented and brazenly communal campaigns while the others struggling with their neutral-journalism stands. Fake news and manipulations in the social media have also been the disturbing developments during the same period.
Under the liberal push of the Dr. Manmohan Singh Government in 1991 private international television broadcasting players were allowed to take part in the Indian broadcasting scenario which hitherto had been dominated by the national broadcaster, Doordarshan. So then, satellite cable entertainment channels had started coming in from the early nineties and news channels had started proliferating since the mid-nineties. Cut-throat competition thus began with the proliferating channels fighting for their respective chunks of viewership. Audience research had thus become an issue of paramount importance.
TAM or Television Audience Measurement, a private concern to measure TV viewership in India, started operations since the mid-nineties, and was soon joined by INTAM or Indian National Television Audience Measurement by ORG-MARG. The ride of the TRP competition and measurement had always been a roughshod journey with most of the channels contesting the statistical figures making their own claims and some of them launching bitter legal battles against the agencies. In view of this, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, started deliberations to build a more credible and complete rating agency in 2008, trying to involve all the stakeholders in the business. After various reports by various committees and recommendations by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) the concept of BARC was formalized in 2010 as a joint industry body founded by the stakeholders: the broadcasters, the advertisers and the advertising & media agencies, and it started its operations from 2013-14. In a landmark move in 2015, TAM and INTAM got merged with BARC. However, the recent developments and various charges/allegations in the preceding years have again proved that a complete and trustworthy rating agency is still a distant dream.
While audience research and rating for the competing broadcasting groups cannot be dome away with, the TRP analysis for the news channels can definitely be abolished altogether, leaving the news channels to concentrate on good and unbiased content to win the respective viewership. This would also liberate the sober news channels from unnecessary cut-throat wars or controversial statistics or rigging over the TRP. Further, news is very close to the physical reality, informing the viewers about the developments in all fields of activity, and any tampering with the news content, making it biased or fake or just unreliable would be an absolute disservice to the citizens. Therefore, we also join the many voices that are already in the ups, for a total stop of the TRP system for the news channels. Suspension is most welcome, but it has to be the fore-bearer of more drastic action.

How Good Or Bad Are Cartoon Channels For Your Kids?

This is a Question, which keeps haunting parents (mostly mothers) of all kids aged 3 to 10. Should we allow kids to watch cartoons, or should it be totally banned, is it good or is it really bad?

The issue that often pops up when chatting about young children watching cartoon channels is usually about leaving your children alone with cartoons to divert or entertain them, instead of parents giving our precious time to them.

Let’s analyze this million-dollar question!

I am a mother of 5-year-old daughter and have been regularly monitoring her television viewing. And this is what I have analyzed.

Let’s point out the good points first:

Cartoon shows are neither good nor bad. Occasionally cartoons are being used to demonstrate behavior that we would like our young children to adapt or copy, and even many times these cartoon shows are also used to exemplify qualities we would like our kids to avoid. It is up to the parents to help the child learn which is which.

From time to time there have been some good series like Madeline, Oswald, Noddy, Backyard Science, MAD, Mickey Mouse Club House. And some Hindi Indian Cartoons, which I would suggest are Gali Gali Sim Sim, Choota Bheem, Krishna, Ramayan and all Mythological stories.

It helps improve vocabulary; it could be English or Hindi.

It helps kids in analyzing situations. To understand how small little things are analyzed and then how small little decisions are taken by understanding what is right and wrong.

It helps them understand different cultures, societies, people etc.

There are so many shows, which are really educational, for all ages. And some programs show various Art and Craft activities, which can be actually utilized to put them to some creative work.

Now, let’s point out the bad points:

There are some really bad cartoons out there, which are a definite no-no for kids like Hagemaaro, ShinShan etc. The language used is awful.

With the kids watching television all the time, their physical activities which can only be achieved by playing in a playground are not taken care of.

Kids try to imitate what they see on television. Be it language or violence, they just want to behave like their “Super Hero”.

When parents continually leave their children to be entertained by the television it can have negative effects on child’s mind because children are primarily proactive and like to be doing something.

And one of the major concerns is the time kids spent in watching those cartoons. Every mother has a tough time moving her kids away from television. Ideally what I would suggest is to have fixed television-watching timings.

The best way to help your child create connection from television is if you get involved with them and explain what they are seeing, discuss different scenarios or outcomes, ask questions, and compare what you are seeing to what she has experienced.

Booming: Television News Channels in India

News programmes have suddenly become hot property and are vying for attention with other popular programmes telecast in different channels. All major television broadcasters are including at least one news channel to their bouquet. The biggest headache for launching a satellite channel is programme software for round the clock. In this juncture, newsgathering is a major task for the 24-hour news channels. To cater this task, the emerging electronic channels have always made an attempt to cover all the incidents irrespective of position, location and time. These channels not only revolutionized the concept of news on Indian television but also changed the news formats. Before 1990s, Doordarshan had monopolized newscast on Indian television and also turned the news programs into a dowdy exercise. Now the private channels made the news an essential commodity like food, cloth and shelter. The strong point of all today’s news bulletins is their topicality, objectivity, glossy editing and high-quality visuals. News has traveled a long way from the DD era. From Local events to International events, breaking news to news analysis, television soap to page3 news, every happening comes under purview of news. In this article, we have covered some significant changes in news broadcasting in India before and after the Gulf War.

Indian Television – Flash Back

Television in India is undergoing significant changes in the current liberalized environment. To understand these changes, one needs to have some brief idea of the road covered by the television channels so far. The journey started as an experimental basis with a financial grant from UNESCO in 15th September 1959. The makeshift studio at Akashvani Bhavan in New Delhi was chosen for location of the experiment. The experiment started with one-hour program, broadcast twice a week, on community health, citizen rights, education and traffic sense etc. As far as news is concerned, it was launched exactly six years after the inception of television broadcasting. Daily one-hour program with a news bulletin was served to the Indian viewers. But one major drawback of television was that you could not enjoy the original colour of the objects because of black and white transmission. First multi-color programme was the Prime Minister’s address to the nation from Red Fort in Delhi on India’s 35th Independence Day. In the same day, DD National channel was launched. The aim of launching the National channel is nurturing national integration, and inculcating a sense of pride in Indians. Indian viewers also enjoyed the colored version of the Asian Games hosted by New Delhi in their drawing room. The coverage of major events and different occasions lend a big hand behind the infiltration of television signals to the nook and corners of the subcontinent. Indian Government had taken all possible steps to expand the television broadcasting demographically and geographically. In 1983 television signals were available to just 28% of the population, this had doubled by the end of 1985 and by 1990 over 90% of the population had access to television signals. In 1984, DD Metro channel was added to provide an exclusive entertainment for the urban viewers. In the beginning, this channel was confined to metropolitan cities.

As a public broadcaster, Doordarshan presented the news in naturalized manner. All controversial issues were pushed under the carpet. The ruling government had a strong hold on the television broadcasting. Doordarshan news bulletins were unable to provide the international news to the national viewers. Objectivity had been the first casualty as news was invariably slanted to suit the party in power. The news was liberated from the confines of the DD newsroom and gained in objectivity and credibility when New Delhi Television (NDTV) produced ‘The World This Week’ in 1988. Everyone was waiting for the Friday night to watch ‘The World This Week’. This was the only India-based programme, which looked out at the rest of the world. The World This Week was the best current affairs programme on the international scenario and carried good stuff of news, which the regular DD news was failed to carry out. This program is ranked as one of the country’s finest and most popular television shows. In 1989, NDTV produces India’s first live televised coverage of the country’s general elections. The critical and commercial success of the coverage sets a new standard for Indian television. After the Gulf War the media panorama has changed forever.

Golf War – The Catalyst

Post-1990 satellite television in India has become transnational in nature. It coincided with the entry of multinational companies in the Indian markets under the Government policy of privatization. International satellite television was introduced in India by CNN through its coverage of the Gulf War in 1991. In August 1991, Richard Li launched Star Plus, the first satellite channel beamed the signal to Indian subcontinent. Subhash Chandra’s Zee TV appeared in October 1992. It is India’s first privately owned Hindi channel to cater the interest of Indian viewers. This ignition followed by Sony and a little later by domestic channels such as Eenadu, Asianet and Sun TV. Entertainment programs had begun to occupy center stage in the organization’s programming strategies and advertising had come to be main source of funding. Doordarshan’s earlier mandate to aid in the process of social and economic development had clearly been diluted. Doordarshan had faced a stiff competition in news and public affairs programming with international channels like BBC and CNN. Doordarshan planned to sell some slots for news programme under sponsored category. In February 1995, NDTV becomes the country’s first private producer of the national news ‘News Tonight’, which aired on the country’s government-owned Doordarshan set a new landmark for Indian television because of its on-the-spot reporting with pertinent visuals. In the same year, TV Today Network occupied a 20 minutes slot in DD Metro channel and aired a Hindi and current affairs programme ‘Aaj Tak’. This programme became popular for its comprehensive coverage and unique style presentation by Late S. P. Singh. Still we remembered the sign-up message “Ye Thi Khabar Aaj Tak, Intizar. Kijiye Kal Tak”. Large number of viewers across India had been watching Aaj Tak as a daily habit because of its innovative style of news presentation. Besides that Nalini Singh’s five-minute fast paced, condensed daily news capsule Ankhon Dekhi, TV Today Network’s Business Aaj Tak and Newstrack was aired on the Metro channel of Doordarshan. This is the period when satellite channels concentrated on entertainment programmes for their respective channels. Doordarshan was still ruled the most wanted area ‘news’.

Major Players

Doordarshan’s monopoly was broken in 1992, when private television channels infiltrated into the Indian boundaries and entertain the viewers as much as possible. In the beginning of 1990s, the private channels offered only entertainment programmes. The entertainment programs include family drama, comedy serials, children programmes, cartoons, movies, talk shows, recipe shows, musical concerts, non-fiction programmes etc. Private entertainment channels added some infortainment programmes to their Fixed Point Charts (FPC). Keeping the demand of infotainment programmes in mind, the media houses started to produce news magazines, entertainment magazines and news programmes for different channels. India’s premier business and consumer news broadcaster and a leading media content provider, Television Eighteen India Limited (TV18) started India’s first ever entertainment magazine ‘The India Show’ on Star Plus in 1993. This emerging media powerhouse provided prime time television content to almost all leading satellite channels in India including BBC, Star Plus, Sony Entertainment Television, Zee, MTV and Discovery. After The India Show, TV18 produced a weekly business news program India Business Report for BBC World. Indian viewers had very limited options (like public service broadcaster Doordarshan, BBC and CNN) for watching the television news. For televised news, the viewers had to watch Dordarshan and some international news channels like BBC or CNN. In this race to provide more news, more information, Zee Television jumped into the battlefield by launching the news channel Zee News in 1995. This News and current affairs channel revolutionized the way news was delivered to the viewers. Since its inception Zee News has endeavoured to be the fastest to provide news, working towards a single goal of Sabse Pahle (Always First). The other round-the-clock news channel, the Murdoch-owned Star TV beamed its exclusively 24-hour news channels, Star News in 1998. Star made a contract of five year with Prannoy Roy-owned NDTV (New Delhi Television Company) to provide news content for this news channel.

The untiring exhaustive coverage of the Kargil war between India and Pakistan gained more publicity and attracted more viewers towards the electronic channel. This televised conflict also sets a news benchmark for wartime journalism. During the Kargil war, common citizens witnessed how their brave Jawans fought despite in hostile conditions and watched the war front live by the exclusively news channels, Star-TV and Zee-News. The live coverage of the battlefield helped to create a euphoria of patriotism among the Indian masses, which later facilitated into collecting huge funds for the welfare of the families of Kargil martyrs. Every news programme draws the attention of large number of viewers but Kargil war attracts private broadcasters to invest more money in the broadcasting business by launching a news channel. In November 1999, TV18 entered into a 49:51 joint venture with CNBC Asia to launch CNBC India. TV18 is the sole program provider to CNBC India, and produces 12 hours of local content per day on this 24-hour satellite channel.

After the huge success of news programme ‘Aaj Tak’, TV Today group launched a 24-hour Hindi news channel with the same name ‘Aaj Tak’, in December 2000, which covers India with insight, courage and plenty of local flavour. Within 11 months of its launch, Aaj Tak emerged as India’s number one news channel and was awarded Best News Channel award from Indian Television Academy Awards. Some mega events apart from regular interesting items (such as Kandhahar hijack, September 11 attacks, Afghanistan war, attack on Parliament, Iraq war, Godhra carnage and riots) have driven up the viewership. As time passed, NDTV’s five years contract with Star group for outsourcing of news and related programming expired on March 2003. With the expiry NDTV forayed into broadcasting business by simultaneously launching two 24-hour news channels; NDTV 24X7 – English news channel and NDTV India – Hindi news channel, which targets the Indian diaspora across the world. News crazy Indians received more news at faster speed from different channels. Any unusual happening can be caught by the television camera anywhere form Rastrapati Bhawan to bedroom. The power of TV journalism was become more visible by the major sting operations like Operation West End and Shakti Kapoor Case. This style of investigative journalism has brought about a change in the way we look at news, amidst new notions of editorial freedom. The world’s largest family ‘Sahara India Parivar’ launched a 24-hour national Hindi news channel, Sahara Samay, in March 28, 2003. It is the first ever city-centric satellite news channels covering 31 cities in India with their own city news bulletins. Keeping the demand of news in mind, the Union cabinet approved the proposal to convert the DD Metro to DD news in a meeting held on 3 October 2003. Consequent to these decisions, DD-News channel was launched on 3 November 2003. You might have noticed that the news channels are language specific. But DD’s news channel contains the round the clock news bulletins in Hindi/ English are also telecast twice a day on the National Network of DD National.

‘Aap Ki Adalat’ fame Rajat Sharma, Sohaib Ilyasi, the man behind the highly successful ‘India’s Most Wanted’ and Taun Tejpal, editor-in-chief of Tehelka roped together and launched a free-to-air Hindi news and current affairs channel India TV on May 20, 2004. Indian viewers had more expectations from this channel. The much-awaited news channel hopes to set itself apart from the existing ones by setting new benchmarks of responsible journalism. Speaking on the occasion of the launch, Rajat Sharma, chairman, India TV, said, “We aim to change the way broadcast news reporting is being conducted in the country. India TV will set new benchmarks by maintaining international standards of responsible and credible news reporting. We will stay away from graphic depictions of violence and sensationalism of news. We will uphold the viewer’s right to correct information and their right to truth and verity. India TV is not just a news channel, it is a movement.” NDTV as a pioneer in Indian television news, set to create a fresh revolution in high-quality business news with the launch of NDTV Profit. NDTV launched this 24-hour business channel on January 17th, 2005.

There is no saturation point in launching of news channel, just booming like sky as the limit. Entertainment channel to infotainment channel, infotainment channel to news channel, news channels to business channel and Business channel to lots more. Now the satellite channels become more topicality with international standard. When we are talking about topicality, CNBC TV18, the only business channel, continues to be the medium of choice for India’s decision makers, affluent audiences across the country since 1999. It has set the pace for the growth in number of television channels by launching a 24-hour consumer channel in Hindi called ‘ Awaaz’. This news channel focusses on empowering consumers on decision-making related to investment, saving and spending. All the programmes are catering to consumers across different walks of life, which included personal finance; variety of markets including commodity, stocks, savings etc.; small businesses; education & career guidance; and verticals like health, shopping etc.

Another news channel was finally launched into the already cluttered news space in Indian television. Jagran TV Pvt Limited’s news channel, Channel 7 up-linked to the air on 27 March 2005. The channel has been set up to cater to the vast Hindi-speaking audiences, already being targeted by a slew of news channels. Channel 7 developed every programme with a bid to cater to all types of audiences and not just pre-dominantly male audiences who get attracted towards news channels.

Regional Leaders

To cater the interest among the Indians, Doordarshan televises programmes in Hindi and associate Official languages. It has launched a number of Regional Language Satellite Channels (DD – 4 to DD – 11 and DD – 13) and telecast programmes in Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi, Kannada, Telugu, Kashmiri, Oriya and Tamil. The Regional channels relayed by all terrestrial transmitters in the state and additional programmes in the Regional Language in prime time and non-prime time available only through cable operators. The Doordarshan regional satellite channels telecast major news programme with some entertainment programmes.

If you think about the private regional channels, they have followed the path of the Big brother (i.e Doordarshan). They are neither completely entertainment channel nor exclusively news channel. They are following the middle path and claiming themselves an infotainment channels. The private channels televise through the state dominant languages. Rising advertising revenues and increasing numbers of viewers have provided the impetus for many big players to enter into the business. Some regional media leaders like ETV, Sun TV, Asianet have a strong grip over the regional market. Some major players tried their luck in different states. Zee television has three regional channels; Zee Marathi, Zee Punjabi and Zee Bangla. Star Network entered into Tamilnadu by launching Star Vijay, one of the most popular entertainment channels in India broadcasting in Tamil. Besides that ETV Network is a part of the well-established Ramoji Group, has created 12 dedicated infotainment regional channels. ETV network is the source of rich entertainment of eight different languages. Those are: Telugu, Bangla, Marathi, Kannada, Oriya, Gujarati, Urdu; and Hindi to viewers in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. Every ETV Network channel focuses exclusively on its audience’s unique cultural identity, its aspirations and its distinct socio-political character. Let us think about the south Indian language Telugu, there are around twelve satellite channels are roaming around the sky with different taste and different flavour. These channels include three news channels, one song-based channels and rest are infotainment channels. When we confine ourselves into news, three channels (ETV2, TV 9 and Teja News) exclusively devoted to news programmes.

Sahara India Pariwar is proud to have five news channels as the bouquet of Sahara Samay. These channels are: Sahara Samay NCR, Sahara Samay Mumbai, Sahara Samay Bihar & Jharkhand, Sahara Samay Madhya Pradesh & Chattisgarh, and Sahara Samay Uttar Pradesh & Uttranchal. Sahara Samay has already managed to gain a loyal audience in India through a bouquet of National & Regional News Channels since its launch. These channels are youthful and vibrant channels targeting students and women, besides that hardcore news stuff. The regional news channels covers the entire spectrum of genre with specific programs on lifestyle, fashion, food, shopping, health and fitness, sports, education, career and city issues, besides giving user-friendly information on traffic updates, city events, train and air timings, etc. Now national news channels cannot confine its boundary to national level. They cannot ignore the regional news because of the stiff competition form the regional cannels. Regional news channels are entering into the competition with a strong will power and also with an aim to portrait regional issues in national and international level.

Conclusion

Now the television industry becomes more specific. In this competitive market, channels are targeting specific viewers. News channels attract more viewers beyond their target by producing interactive and interesting programmes. Every channel needs to do an extensive research on different concepts and different themes to attract more viewers and in the same time more advertisers. After all, advertisements are the bread and butter for the channels. With increased consumer preference for news programmes, television news channels have grown faster than other niche channels. News channels are booming just like sky as the limit. Those days are not far away, when we will get satellite news channel for every major city in India. Staying in abroad, we can update ourselves about all the happening of our hometown. Now news is not restricted to political happenings. It will be extended its limit to every unwanted and hided corners of the society. At last we can reach in the conclusion that anything, which is strange or disgusting, is news. There are no rigid rules, which defines news.

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Top 6 Channels for Mobile Marketing

Statistics speak volumes.

The US mobile web population will be up almost 25% by the end of this year.
By 2015, more than three in five mobile users and almost half the total US population will be using the mobile Internet.
Smartphone usage will increase to 38% of mobile users and 28.8% of the overall population by the end of this year.
The number of smartphone users is set to increase 49.6% this year and continue growing at a steady double-digit pace through 2015.

(Statistics and projections from recent eMarketer research)

The unprecedented growth of mobile phone usage is providing more opportunities for businesses to reach their market than ever before. After seeing these statistics you may find yourself saying, yes, mobile marketing a big deal and a great investment for my marketing budget, but where do I begin?

You should start with an understanding of what mobile marketing outlets are available and what benefits they have. Here is a rundown of the top six mediums:

Mobile Website – There are several projections that in the next few years mobile Internet browsing will be more widely used than PC/MAC Internet browsing. Developing a mobile website is typically the first step in your mobile marketing and will increase the satisfaction of your viewers as they visit your site on their mobile phone.

Mobile Application – According to Ovum’s app download forecasts, there will be 14 billion applications downloaded this year. That’s over 400 apps per second! Not only are mobile applications great for increasing brand equity, they can also provide substantial revenue.

Mobile Ads – Mobile ads are what you see in the free version of so many mobile apps. With over 400 apps downloaded per second, there is a lot of opportunity to increase brand awareness and incite action amongst a targeted audience.

Location-Based Apps – One of the fastest growing areas of mobile marketing is location-based services. Consumers often use applications such as FourSquare, Where, Google Places, Yelp, and Merchant Circle to find out what’s going on around them and find special deals. This is a great way to let consumers who are physically near to your business find out about you!

QR Codes – A technology originally used in the manufacturing process, this 2D code allows smart phone users to gain information simply by scanning the code with their phone’s camera. The matrix-like code can be easily developed and is often used to link on-the-go consumers to mobile-friendly websites.

Mobile Coupons – An old concept utilizing new technology. Use QR codes, mobile apps, text messages or your mobile website to offer coupons and entice consumers to shop at your store (brick and mortar or virtually).

The question is not whether or not you should integrate mobile technology into your marketing strategy, but which way works best for your company.