The Evolution of the Mobile Marketing Mix
By Cindy Krum
Senior SEO Analyst at Blue Moon Works
How will the evolution of mobile technology and acceptance of mobile communication impact the bottom line of your marketing program? The answer depends largely on your ability to effectively integrate mobile into the marketing mix by leveraging the correct mobile channel and offering a compelling mobile marketing message.
Begin by establishing whether or not mobile is appropriate for your marketing campaign. Mobile marketing is a great way to connect with your customers, and allow them to interact with your brand in a very personal way, but it is not right for all marketing campaigns. You should evaluate how your target market is using mobile technology and how mobile marketing will uniquely allow you to reach your marketing goals.
Once these questions have been addressed, and you have established that it makes sense to include mobile in your marketing mix, you can get started planning the mobile campaign. You must begin by establishing which mobile channel best suits your marketing goals and your target market. Once all these things have been accomplished you should determine what your mobile marketing message will be and how you will integrate your mobile marketing campaign into the rest of your marketing efforts.
Mobile Web: One of the simplest ways to begin mobile marketing is to ensure that your website is usable on mobile devices. There is no need to go out and purchase a new domain or create a mobile-specific website. In most cases, you can make minor changes to your existing site to ensure that it will work on a mobile device. In general, websites translate best on mobile if they are primarily built in html or xhtml. Anything that takes a long time to load on your traditional computer will take even longer to load on a mobile device, so avoid excessive use of flash, action script and large images. Other than that, the best advice is to test your site on a variety of different mobile devices to see how it looks, then make updates accordingly.
Mobile E-mail: Many people are accessing their e-mail on mobile devices, so it is also important that you optimize your e-mail campaigns so that the e-mails can be read on mobile devices. Be sure to test your e-mail messages on a couple different mobile devices before you send it out. Make sure that you are using compelling subject lines (that won’t be sent to peoples SPAM folders), with the important information in the first 30 characters. Some Mobile devices don’t display a ‘From’ line so if there is room, include your brand name in your ‘Subject’ line. Always send a text alternative to html e-mails, and include a link to an online version of the e-mail that people can click if they are having trouble viewing the e-mail.
Location Based Marketing: Many smart phones are equipped with technology that allows messages to be sent to the phone via Infrared technology beams (IR) or Bluetooth. These two communication technologies have limited range, which allows you to set your marketing message to constantly send from a physical store location, but it will only be received when the customer is within range. This is another great way to take in-store promotions one-step further and remind customers of advertised deals or create special incentives for mobile users.
Marketers are also using GPS enabled cell phones to send users targeted e-mails or text messages based on your location. These types of communications can be considered very intrusive and personal, so it is important to tread lightly and best to reserve this type of marketing for customers who interact very frequently with your brand.
Evaluating Mobile Success:
The final aspect of any marketing campaign is the evaluation and tracking of success - and mobile marketing is no exception. It is important to let your efforts run for enough time to get a true read of the success of the campaign because mobile marketing is new to consumers, and ‘buzz’ is frequently a large part of any mobile marketing campaign. It is also best to do a couple different one-time promotions before you do a full assessment of the success of the campaign, because that gives consumers time to catch on and create buzz.
When you are evaluating your mobile campaign it is also important to remember that your mobile marketing efforts can affect the success of other aspects of your marketing campaign. Pay attention to how mobile could be creating indirect benefits to your sales volume both online and in stores. There are a variety of methods of tracking and measuring the success of your mobile marketing campaign, and there are even web analytics tools that can track the online portions of your mobile campaign. It is best to use a combination of what is available to ensure you are getting the most accurate results possible.
When done correctly, mobile marketing can do a lot to affect the bottom line of your marketing campaigns, but it is crucial that you use an integrated marketing strategy, effectively leverage the correct mobile channel, and use an appropriate marketing message.
Cindy Krum is the Senior SEO Analyst for Blue Moon Works, Inc., a provider of marketing and strategy services. Cindy brings fresh and creative ideas to the Blue Moon Works team, speaking at industry trade shows and writing for the company blog whenever time permits.
-- Guest Blogger
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