KUWAIT: Every marketing professional swears by catchy advertizing that helps promote a successful business. Newer techniques are developed and during the past few years, SMS advertisements have proliferated. While some are subscription-based, others are spam messages.
Thanks to the high price of newspaper advertisements, small-scale companies advertise themselves using the mobile phone platform. Some depend on their own Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts, while others seek the services of advertising agencies.
According to Fatma Offtada from Nuzha, SMS advertising has attracted many clients to her company, and is now the main source of advertising, "For the past two years, our company has been dealing with an advertizing agency, in addition to using the services provided by Wataniya Telecom. Each SMS costs us 12 fils, and set a quota for 1,000 SMS messages for our event. We work in the field of entertainment, and all the students read these SMS messages," Fatma, Operation Manager of Nuzha told the Kuwait Times.
SMS advertizing targets a specific client base, "The advertizing company allowed us to chose the age, area, and nationality of potential clients we aimed to reach. They send SMS messages to subscribers that fall within this parameter. The SMS service has gotten us work. I consider this way of advertizing better than the placing advertisements in the newspaper," added Fatma.
Ahmad Ali, Sr Account Manager MC Group, an advertising agency explained that there are two ways of placing advertisements, "There are the regular mobile short text messages sent to people on behalf of our client, promoting goods and services. It's a good option as nearly everybody owns a mobile phone. There is also internet advertising available on social media websites like Facebook or Twitter.
Our clients don't require our services while advertising through the social media such as Facebook and Twitter. This is because they have their own accounts and it's very easy for them to use. Our services are demanded while using SMS advertising. We deal with three suppliers or agents that provide this service. These ways have became more common during the past three years," he pointed out.
The advertising agency also provides packages on the different platforms chosen, "We offer packages to our clients which are even more in demand than SMS messages. This package includes advertising on Google, You Tube, and MSN. The client can also choose only one of these. We have clients from different fields that use this services like restaurants, fashion stores and others. Some prefer that messages be sent on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis," he added.
Most companies maintain their own database of clients that receive SMS messages, "Our store registers the data of all our customers so that we can send them text messages later. We use this method to inform them about our special offers, new arrivals and collections, and other special occasions like Eid, Girgian, Valentine's Day and others. Sometimes we also send emails to our customers and rarely advertise in the newspaper," stated Merry, a sales woman in a fashion store at Muhalab Mall.
