idea: Create additional service offering for outdoor advertising companies to provide an additional value added service of SMS marketing
Background: Having just returned from India, a more advanced mobile phone market than the US, I experienced first hand great usage of outdoor advertising and SMS marketing. While driving I saw a billboard for a bank that was promoting a specific account with a great interest rate. To get more information, the billboard instructed to text a short code. I had a Hutch mobile phone at the time and thought I would give it a try. After sending the text message to the short code advertised I received a message instantly thanking me for my interest and informing me someone would get in touch with me to discuss further. Only a few minutes later my phone rang from an outbound telesales agent ready to answer any questions I had and promote the product.
Thoughts: Not only is the integration with the call center extremely effective for those travelers stuck in traffic, but provides an instant connection with the customer and drives real sales from the outdoor ad. An alternative approach would be to simply capture the customers info and provide basic info in a reply SMS, additional menu options to get additional info or a reference to a web address where they could visit later. After a brief search for potential platforms in the US to support this marketing strategy, I found a large number of them. Given this, I think the key is to not be the platform, but the service provider that educates the customer on how to build, manage and monitor the campaigns. Goomzee Connect should stay focused on offering services related to specific industries such as real estate, classifieds, and potentially outdoor advertising. Goomzee Connect could partner with the outdoor advertising companies such as ClearChannel, CBS, and Lamar to allow them to provide this capability as a value added service to their portfolio of outdoor billboards.
Potential Customers:
– Outdoor Advertising Association of America
Platform Competitors:
– iLoop
– Soapbox Mobile
– GoLive! Mobile
– Cellit
– flyTXT
– TextSMSMarketing
– Movo
Mobile Interesting Facts and Figures