Make Mobile Marketing Compelling

Make Mobile Marketing Compelling

Without restrictive networks and high fees, mobile marketing will soon reach new highs.
Part of the reality of this industry is a tendency to zealously promote particular technologies for a short period of time. Years ago, it was mobile, then it was Second Life, and now Nintendo's Wii looks like it might turn out to be the next big thing. The hype machines never stop chugging, but I believe it's time to give mobile a second, sober look.
Over the past several years, there has been a lot of talk about the potential of mobile marketing, but the reality of the medium has yet to be realized. Finally, it seems like the technology has begun to catch up with those possibilities. Until now, most of the discussion on how to leverage these always-on, never-leave-home-without-them devices as an ad delivery network has been focused around SMS, which is not a particularly good example of an advanced marketing technique. But that text-centric point of view is about to change. When Apple launched the iPhone, it jolted our senses with a very new form factor and a technological backbone that makes many new cool things possible.
The biggest question about mobile marketing is what it is good for. There are many applications, but in order to be successful, we need to ask ourselves what will be useful for both advertiser and consumer. Right now, the applications are, for the most part, limited to "SMS to win" and e-coupons. There is no killer app in the mobile marketing world right now beyond consumers making a call to talk to someone. Beyond a few preliminary successes and failures, I'm sad to say that mobile marketing to this point has been a non-starter. There is really nothing out there that has wowed consumers, just yet.
Let's take a step back and look at things from a larger perspective. A mobile device is an always-on computer with built-in connectivity. These little computer devices are getting much smarter and more useful, improving the design with better screens, better interfaces, cooler applications and more useful operating systems. Apple took these improvements to another level, and in many ways the iPhone was less a phone than a canvas with which to do cool things. Given the public response to the launch, we can only bet that most manufacturers will soon follow suit.
Now is the time to start thinking about mobile marketing in a compelling and interesting way. But before we start planning campaigns, we have to look at what mobile marketing really is and what things can be created.
Mobile is a "be there at the right time and place" medium. It's also a bit of a long tail form of media because, for the most part, it's more about pull than push, unless you're buying commercials for mobile video. Mobile means "on the go," and mobile marketing must therefore provide the consumer with something that is useful to them in the field. In these contexts, there are six main strategies for using mobile as a marketing tool: