Five ways you can make better use of mobile

Marketing via mobile is a powerful way to expose people to a brand, and to get them to interact with it. Consumers want something from the sites they frequent on their mobile phones, while brands want to achieve something from their mobile marketing.

You hit the marketing sweetspot when you manage to match these two sets of desires.

What do consumers want from their mobile phones?

• Social networking
• Email and instant messaging
• Music
• Games
• Content
• News and information
• Simple and secure payments

What do brands want from mobile?

• Ability to build a loyal profiled user base
• Communication with a large, diverse base
• Customer retention and repeat usage
• Consumer engagement
• Consumer awareness of their mobi site
• Increased brand exposure
• Effective targeting

From these insights, we’ve distilled five golden rules to ensure that a mobile strategy will tick boxes for both the marketer and the mobile consumer.

1. Use mobile to directly raise awareness
To get your message to the potential audience through your mobile site, they need to know it exists. Mobile banner ads work well, and you should expect click-through’s of between 4 and 7% from running these types of campaigns.

In turn, you must be sure your target audience goes somewhere that will reward their click: a mobi site with information to download (video, wallpapers, music, information etc).

2. Mobile advertising can be effective across all demographics
It’s obvious you need to “Fish where the fish are”. You can also fish for several types of fish at the same time. If you give away content, design it to appeal to a range of audiences.

You need to know your target demographics, and then give the various groups options in how they can engage with the brand.

Younger users may download wallpapers or ringtones, older ones may respond well to trial offers or even relevant lifestyle information.

Effective campaigns like this should be achieving a CTR of 5% or more.

3. Brands and mobile internet sites should put the user experience first
On the web you can get away with a slightly opaque interface or a vague call to action. Do this in the mobi space and you won’t even get to “start”.

Clicking links and loading pages is more effort on mobile than it is on the normal Web. Don’t make your audience jump through too many hoops.

Keep it simple. Get permission first. Don’t take liberties with mobile users, their phone is personal, and they’ll punish you if do.

Interact with them. Engage them. Reward them.

As Raymond Ackerman puts it, “Treat the consumer like a queen, they in turn will make you their king.”

4. Mobile display advertising needs to be a clear focus
Use well-chosen images rather than text. A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the small-screen mobi world, you won’t have space for many words.

5. Mobile is more effective when something of value is offered
Mobile data costs money, and browsing the mobile web costs time. Make the reward meaningful.

Some possibilities to consider: Free airtime. Free music. Free mobile content. Money or credits deposited into their mobile money, loyalty programme or actual bank account. Perhaps a discount off the next purchase of a designer label. Free movie tickets.

You know, something people actually want.