Mobile Marketing

Businesses interested in incorporating mobile into their marketing strategies should consider the following tips to maximize the medium:

1. Decide on your mobile marketing strategy. This can take days, weeks or months, depending on how quickly your marketing department moves.

2. Find the right technology partner. How long does it take your company to vet a vendor and sign a contract? Unlike the early days of email, you can't ask Joe in IT to create a homegrown system for sending text messages. The giant mobile carriers like O2, Vodafone, Three and Metor work through mobile aggregators, or middlemen that provide short codes and connectivity to individual companies. You can either work with an aggregator or go with an
application service provider that offers a user-friendly tool.

3. Apply for your short code. If you want to use a catchy short code, known as a vanity code that's unique to your company, it can take eight weeks to 10 weeks. You can shave a bit of time off the process if you're willing to use a "shared short code," which is exactly what it sounds like: an existing number that several companies use. You get short codes through your mobile technology vendor.

4. Get carrier approval for your program. Also handled by your mobile technology vendor during the short code waiting period, carrier approval takes about two weeks. The major mobile carriers must sign off on your program in advance. Each one has slightly different rules, but most want to review a sample message and test your opt-in processes.

5. Build your list. Think you're going to upload an existing database and start texting away? Think again. In mobile, opt-in is a mandatory requirement. Get specific consent to contact people via SMS. After getting the consent keep a record of the fact that you have it. Also, remember: The opt-in process has to be started via another channel. Mobile carriers come down hard on companies that spam. They consider it spam if a user didn't specifically send you a text message from the mobile phone number in question.

6. Deliver urgent content. Text messages are always time-sensitive or immediate messages that can't be sent via email, mail or another medium. So if your messages aren't urgent, your subscribers may not want to give up part of their messaging allotment to receive them.

7. Make your messages portable. When communicating with customers or subscribers via SMS, make sure your messages will reach them on the go; if not, don't send them. If your messages can wait until they return to email, your customers or subscribers may not value receiving them via text.

8. Make time for planning. To launch an SMS campaign that drives subscriber value and results, allot approximately three months for appropriate planning; procurement of a private, nonshared short code; testing; and implementation. After launch, allow more time for ongoing measurement and optimization.

9. Measure for success. Before you launch an SMS campaign, set benchmarks for how you'll measure its success. Conversion, coupon redemption, list growth and surveys all are common measures for success that can help drive changes or optimizations for your SMS program.

10. Get in now. The time for marketers to embrace mobile advertising is now. Brand effectiveness studies show that consumers are 25 percent more likely to make a purchase after viewing a mobile ad than those who didn't. This drives brand or product interest and purchases long after the initial mobile interaction. Certain industries are successfully leading the way by integrating innovative mobile ads into their overall strategies. The entertainment industry, for example, is spearheading creative uses to build excitement around film and DVD releases.

11. Mix diverse elements. For the highest return on investment, use multimedia elements in mobile advertising campaigns. The most effective way isn't to simply run a banner or text ad across devices. Rather, to achieve high levels of customer engagement, create an interaction, often via a landing site, not just a rote presentation of a product or service. Instead of recycling an online ad for use in mobile, for example, format ads for mobile devices' smaller screens. Combine elements such as banners, video, click-to-call options, quizzes and ringtones.

12. Capitalize on device capabilities. Make the most of the increasing availability of mobile devices with sophisticated multimedia, web and video capabilities to showcase brands and products to consumers with the highest impact. The iPhone, for instance, with its large screen and high-quality video capabilities, has been driving the adoption of the mobile web and mobile video. Mobile video viewership is skyrocketing across all devices in general, too. As more of these multifaceted mobile devices enter the market, consumers' video and web browsing habits — and their expectations — are following suit.

13. Go beyond the click. A lot of attention is paid to clickthrough rates, but this particular metric alone is one-dimensional and should be used with more in-depth indicators of favorability and likelihood to buy. Mobile marketers must rethink the way they measure success and go beyond the click. Big brands aren't always aiming for an on-the-spot mobile purchase, particularly on large, high-priced items like cars and computers. In these cases, brand recognition and recall are much more qualitative measurements of success. Reaching consumers on mobile devices — their most personal devices — allows marketers to generate meaningful, targeted consumer interactivity and interest. Therefore, marketers should be looking at mobile advertising's effect on consumers, particularly post-mobile interaction, and not only at consumers' effect on advertisers' clickthrough numbers.