10 Important Factors for Mobile Marketing

How to engage with mobile consumers?

Here i will try to discuss some of the factors which should be taken in to account by brands in order to effectively utilize next big medium 'MOBILE' for marketing:

1.Strategy: Decide which of your core products or services are most useful for on-the-go customers and start there. Don't try everything at once.Understanding mobile users, their behavior and usage is very essential while defining a mobile strategy.
2.Relevant to the consumer: Mobile phones are still very personal devices, and when a consumer signs up with a carrier, that person is putting a certain amount of trust in that company. While planing the campaign, make sure that it is something of value in return for the objective of the communication campaign.Taking risks is one thing and Ignorance is another, don't make consumers life hell with mobile spams.
3.Awareness: Use existing channels that you already use with your customers – email, direct mail, point-of-sale advertising, banners, Web site and print ads – and get them to interact or respond via their mobile.Standalone ads on mobile phones will not deliver results if they don't get integrated in a mobile strategy which also takes into account promotion, sales and customer services.
4.Content: The quality of the content drives engagement so it is important to ensure the user’s experience with the content is user-friendly and entertaining.They should be worth more, advertisers should be willing to pay more.
5.Target Customer: Campaigns will perform better if you’re going after a specific target audience.Try to connect with those customer who were previously disconnected.Ask customers to do one thing; to choose, vote, get a coupon, set an alert, or take an exclusive offer. The idea is to validate the channel and test your ability to influence incremental changes in behavior.
6.Cost: Mobile marketing is costly deal as consumer pays for every single SMS message and mobile internet is still too expensive for users.Text messaging acts as the activation point for major media content by providing consumers a simple way to find advertisers and their mobile assets but for starting any mobile campaign you need to exchange atleast 2 to 5 SMS.Now while replying to your SMS consumer does think of cost unless he is not not subscribed to an unlimited data plan!!!!
7.Customer Control: Give the control to customer.Customers should have a mechanism for telling you when and how they would like to receive marketing messaging on the mobile phone as the consumer has a right to privacy and as a marketer we need to gain approval form them.Make customer feel warm and fuzzy about your brand.
8.Post-Campaign customer satisfaction survey: Use email and mobile media to get customer reactions and gather customer input and feedback.The data points that you have on the consumer should be used to drive segmentation and personalization. Most importantly it should be used to tailor the message to the interest of the consumer.This will help you to manage spam issues, and will make the content more relevant and valuable to the consumer.
9.Privacy: Commit and state clearly to consumer that you will not share the consumer’s information with others i.e. any third-parties.
10.Medium: You need to decide which mobile technologies is relevant for your campaign. a.SMS b.Mobile Web c.Mobile Apps d.Mobile Games e.Mobile Display f.Mobile Email are some of the basic component/ways.In short mobile marketing can be divided in three parts:SMS, Mobile Internet, and smartphone applications.Now you need to decide depending on users & demographics which you want to target.Don't try everything at once, try that medium that can most closely identify with your brand identity; or your unique selling proposition.

Moral of the Story:

If your company is embarking on a mobile initiative for the first time, do your homework about mobile marketing etiquette. Lead with your strong suit like any other communication, if you don't have a big idea nobody's going to care enough to forward it.
Having a clear campaign objective is the most important factor,the mobile channel provides brands with the unique ability to connect with their consumer like never before as its always on and always connected more than any other medium TV or web.....