Mobile Marketing Advice

I continue to struggle with ideas on how to incorporate mobile marketing into my direct marketing tool-box. Specifically, I’m having a hard time getting my arms around practical applications, and thinking of real-life ideas that will benefit my clients. Yet, this is an industry that is huge and growing. Mobile marketing is a channel to be reckoned with and maximized for the right opportunity.

This article from DM News provides some interesting insight. The article presents four different viewpoints and tips on how to make mobile marketing work—how to incorporate this channel into your marketing mix.

The first tip is from David Spear, EVP of sales and marketing, mobile technologies, LSN Inc.

Takeaway: With mobile Web campaigns, it's best to keep the design elements simple

“Whether a campaign is designed to drive brand awareness, deliver knowledge or influence direct response, it must be easy for the subscriber to understand, engage and extract value from it. Make sure you consider all elements when reviewing a campaign for simplicity. If the campaign is designed to be simple and straightforward, then traction will follow and viral will grow organically and successfully. If the campaign is overly complicated, it will disappoint in almost every aspect.”

The next tip, recommending Short Message Service (SMS), also known as text messaging comes from Steve Siegel, VP of brand solutions, HipCricket. His reasons for SMS are pretty compelling:

• The reach of SMS—everyone uses text messaging.
• The ability to measure results (you know I love this benefit!)
• SMS allows for remarketing opportunities
• SMS can be used to gather important data points from consumers (another benefit I love!).

Next, Bryan Morrison, President, Ipsh, brings us great information about mobile marketing’s ability to exploit proximity strategies. He says: “Proximity is the concept that makes mobile special.”

“While the Internet forced marketers to learn interactivity, mobile layers context on top, making your location the most important benefit the medium can offer. Understanding proximity allows brands to provide consumers genuine utility in their day-to-day lives.”

Just consider the possibilities—retailers can offer you coupons or special offers, at the point in time that you’re entering the mall! Timely, and valuable to consumers.

Finally, Michael Chang, CEO and co-founder of Greystripe, offers insight into the benefits of in-game mobile marketing—essentially embedding your advertising within a game people play on their mobile device (phone). More info on this concept, from the article:

“In-game ads are primarily priced on a CPM basis, reflecting the strong branding opportunities available from full-screen ads and rich data-gathering features. Pricing is also impacted by targeting. As with WAP banners, regional targeting is almost always available, and some providers offer more refined targeting such as by carriers, types of handset, or based on user demographics.”

“Advertising in mobile games provides bigger and richer ads than SMS or WAP banners, as well as a positive brand association for the advertiser. In-game advertising offers unique features, a great user experience and allows advertisers to benefit from a positive association with fun mobile content.”

Hopefully, these four unique perspectives have shed some light on practical applications of mobile marketing. I know that they’ve given me some great food for thought!