Most of the emphasis on mobile advertising has so far been centered around targeted text advertising like that found on search engines.  In fact, the majority of the major pushes into new forms of mobile advertising have come from the search companies.  Several companies have been using mobile as an interactive extension of existing products, such as television shows and online tools and services.

MarketingSherpa has a delicious case study outline the steps Popeyes Chicken took to test a combination of the two approaches.

The project was fairly simple.  But that's exactly how the field marketing director behind the study envisioned it.  She wanted it to be easy, cheap, ethical, and trackable.  By enlisting the help of qtags, a text messaging service, Popeyes was able to pull their test off for under $5,000.

The testing was done at over 90 Popeyes locations in the Houston, Texas area and involved customers sending a text message to a simple 5 digit number.  In return, the customers were sent a text message with an offer that the company had had a lot of success with in print form.  All customers had to do was bring in their phone, show the Popeyes employees their text message, and they received the discount.

To promote the 30-day campaign, Popeyes used outdoor marquees and window decals to display the message "For great deals, text 'popeyes' to 78247".  The messaging service was able to track the number of incoming text messages, the area code of the sender, the time, and the day of the message.  Area code tracking turned out to be very important… especially when the offer went viral.  People in the Houston area were forwarding the offer on to friends in other areas!

The response to the promotion surprised Popeyes.  Thousands of Houston residents responded to the signs and marquees.  And while only a small number of the people receiving the mobile offer redeemed them, Popeyes considered the test a success.  They were able to measure the times and days that the most people responded.  Those numbers can help Popeyes plan future advertising campaigns more efficiently.  In fact, the most popular times and days for response to the promotion were not times or days that Popeyes had previously considered "prime".

So you see… sometimes a marketing campaign isn't about redemption of an offer or promotion.  Popeyes didn't get many takers on the offer it sent, which could be more of an indication that people wanted a different discount than it is an unsuccessful marketing medium.  But even though people weren't lined up around the corner to flash Popeyes employees their cell phone, the company is now in an excellent position for future promotions.  They were off by quite a bit in their assumptions on prime advertising times.  The inexpensive promotion will help them refocus their advertising efforts to those times discovered in the study.

When was the last time you verified or checked your own prime advertising times?  Those things change so it's always a good idea to run periodic testing to make sure you're still hitting that target audience at the optimal time.

Now then… who's hungry?