Marketing with Your iPhone
When most people think about the iPhone they think of the younger generation talking,
sending texts to millions of other teens, sharing photos, and more talking. That's what
corporate America is beginning to see, especially those with savvy marketing departments.
Smaller to medium sized businesses have really started to pay attention to what the
younger set is doing with their iPhones and how they socialize. It is very different from what
most of us grew up with. What these businesses have discovered is a virtual gold mine for
sales opportunities. This is how marketing with your iPhone can help to increase your
bottom line.
Using a phone for marketing is not something revolutionary and new. Ever since man
discovered the telephone, it has been used for sales and marketing purposes. However, in
today's competitive markets, how you use the telephone is more important than ever
before. Let's take a look and see how marketing with your iPhone can generate more
business for your company.
First of all, you will need an account with several of the social marketing websites that are
out there. If you are specifically looking to target iPhone users, who happen to have more
disposable income than others. This is based on the fact that they can afford a $500-600
cell phone. The websites you should be specifically looking into are Facebook and
YouTube. No, these websites are not just for kids. Here is how powerful using social
websites can be. Take Facebook for example. Have a programmer write a Facebook
application for you to upload. This is not difficult and almost anyone with some knowledge
of C++ or other language can do this for you. Have this application be unique and
desirable. Perhaps make it a game, or a contact manager. Then offer a very desirable
feature that can only be retrieved if they visit your website. For example, there is a fish tank
application that offers glitter fish and other critters for your tank. You can only get these fish
if you visit a website first.
Now here is how this marketing with your iPhone helps you. Your application gets
downloaded by Susie who loves it. She also wants your special feature so she visits your
website, which happens to sell upscale shoes, handbags and accessories. She fell in love
with your product and ordered a bag. Then she sent a notice to all of her friends about your
application. Then those contacts also visited your website and sent out more links and
information about your application and website to others. The "viral" marketing has started
and you really did not have to do much other than getting the application uploaded to
Facebook. In a nutshell, this is how you can start marketing with your iPhone.
The iPhone plays a huge part in this marketing scenario listed above. You as a salesperson
or marketer can use your iPhone to rate the uploaded application, keep track of who is
downloading it, post messages to the blog about how great it is and invite everyone who
has downloaded it to be your friend. Now, your list of friends becomes your potential
customer database. You can send out special sales to these people because you know
they fit into your companies demographics. More and more businesses are starting to catch
onto this concept. This is one way that you can start marketing with your iPhone.
YouTube is another avenue for marketing with your iPhone. There are so many ways you
can use this website and your iPhone to market your business. Musicians can post demo
videos out there. Companies that are offering a product can post a sample advertisement
or an additional advertisement out there. Keep in mind that iPhone users can download and
save these videos to their iPhones and readily share them with everyone. You want your
video to be entertaining, worth sharing and effective. Selling blenders? Why not do a video
on how not to use your blender. Same thing with vacuum cleaners.
As you can see, marketing with your iPhone can take your business into areas that only a
few are utilizing. However, each day more and more companies are joining in the social
marketing revolution. Now is the time to get in on this, before everyone else does and it
becomes no different that junk mail, spam, and telemarketing.