Moving on from SMS marketing

This comes from SMS being widely used in the ‘spray and pray' approach to try and secure short terms sales, which has resulted in SMS being seen by consumers as a tool used by companies to spam them.

Building with your customers

Mobile marketing needs to be built on the understanding that the cellphone is a personal device. The communication that comes through the cellphone is seen as important to people because it takes their attention away from what they are doing at the time. This fact needs to form the basis for any campaign along with the question, “How will people respond when they receive this message?” Because when consumers' cellphones notify them of a message and they pick it up to find it's a marketing message from a company, the experience need to be worthy of their attention. If it isn't, they'll be annoyed and the next time the company communicates with them via cellphone, they'll simply delete the message.

It's not just about communication to the consumers. In the world of mobile, response is everything. Companies need to prepare their campaigns carefully, thinking beyond boosting short terms sales to a longer terms strategy and how to build an effective two-way relationship with customers that could last years.

In order to establish this kind of relationship, companies using SMS need to think harder about how they can use the power of the cellphone to make an impact when communicating with their bases. This is the first step. Once the consumer gives their attention to the communication, the company needs to make sure they have a plan of action for how to engage the consumer when they respond.

Being creative with mobile marketing

Mobile marketing is all about engagement. Campaigns need to be creative and capture the attention of consumers. SMS can be used within that strategy, but it needs to be used as a notification service to action users to something else.

There are various ways to capture consumers' attention, but the three pillars of mobile marketing are multimedia, interactive campaigns and integration with other marketing campaigns across other media types.

MMS campaigns and mobile websites (mobisites) are therefore vital in any mobile marketing strategy. Campaigns should also give the consumer an incentive to respond and should be integrated into broader campaigns on other mediums like TV and print.

Once companies have the attention of their base, there needs to be a fulfillment, for example, sending them to a mobisite where they could get free mobile content, or giving them a voucher which can be redeemed in a retail store.

The important point is that, given how sensitive consumers are about their cellphones, companies generally have one chance to build an effective relationship with their customers using direct marketing. If they succeed in establishing this relationship, then mobile marketing becomes a very effective tool for two way communication between the company and its customer.