Creative Masterclass On… Mobile Marketing

By Marshall, Richard M

Approach mobile marketing with a long-term plan to build trust with your customers and a fully interactive relationship, writes Richard M Marshall Marketing is about building a relationship between the brand and the consumer. Mobile marketing makes that relationship immediate, intimate and bi-directional. However, like any relationship, mobile marketing requires trust to be established before it can flourish. This step-by-step guide explains a progressive approach to creating that trust.

Pick the best channel to the customer

Many people associate mobile marketing with unsolicited text messaging, but this is only one of the available channels. Others include mobile internet and applications, both of which can carry a variety of advertising formats, as well as video and music downloads. And, whatever channel you choose, maximise the call to action potential: ensure the consumer can call you at a click. It is surprisingly easy to forget that this is a phone after all.

Identify the length of the relationship

Is this going to be a quick, one-off event, perhaps driving an offer to a consumer? Or are you looking for a long-term relationship? A single SMS message will do very nicely for the former, but the latter requires a built-for-purpose mobile site or branded downloadable application.

Always ensure opt-in

Legally and logically, you must be invited by the consumer to use their mobile for marketing. The best possible approach is to let the consumer pull your marketing messages – by requesting, browsing, or downloading them. Oh, and remember – again, legally and logically – always provide an opt-out.

Make a mobile brand through consistent short codes

Ensuring that all your SMS or WAP Push messages consistently use the same code and any keywords will make them become familiar to your consumers.

Adapt content for the channel

Just because it works on the web, in print or on TV, doesn’t mean it will work on mobile. And I don’t just mean the different formats, colour depths, and other technical details. People consume mobile content differently, often on the move, or waiting, so their attention levels are different and they are typically not willing to pay attention for too long.

Keep it relevant

Because your message is delivered directly to the consumer, it is vital it is relevant, timely and interesting. Anything else will be rejected out of hand and cause irritation. If an advert inj ected in a WAP session is irrelevant, the user might be annoyed. And if they have received blatant spam, it is likely to cause a rupture in the relationship we’re trying to build.

Allay cost fears through explanation

Many people, especially the young, are very cost-conscious and are constantly concerned about using up their credit or not being able to pay a monster fee. So you need to avoid bill shock by explaining any likely costs.

Think viral and user-generated

Jokes, short videos, or useful information sites and applications will readily get passed on, taking your brand with them. Make the relationship two-way. Get your consumers to be creative, sending you the cool content. And make sure all this is easy to do: include an obvious “Refer a Friend” button and check all material can be easily forwarded.

Follow these steps, and you will create an engaging, ideally interactive, mobile relationship with your users. Being able to project your messages right into your consumers’ hands is amazingly powerful – get it right and you will maximise return on your investment.

My favourite campaign; Betfair

One of the most effective forms of mobile marketing is the mobile website. There is considerable excitement around these sites – and at least one substantial challenge. Here’s how Rapid Mobile used a patentpending platform to overcome that challenge to create a mobile website, now used on more than 2,400 different handsets, for the online betting company Betfair.

Until 2005, online betting was available only on a PC or PDA- based web browser linked to the internet. The flexibility and convenience of mobile had been discussed but not yet effectively exploited. At this point, though, Betfair was already investigating how it might do just that.

Rapid Mobile, meanwhile, was addressing the biggest challenge: getting a mobile marketing solution to work on all of the thousands of models out there. Normally this process is slow and expensive. Rapid Mobile solved this with its Active Provisioning System. This system learns about new devices as they appear, building applications specifically for them and in a matter of seconds.

Today, Betfair’s mobile website, which was deliberately designed to be simple, clear and easy to use, lets punters place a bet anytime, anywhere – even partway through a race or game. :

Alistair Harvey of Betfair says this option wasn’t a difficult sell. “We just had to educate our customers about a highly usable tool.”

Betfair: mobile website gives constant availability

Richard M Marshall is chief executive of Rapid Mobile Media

Copyright Haymarket Business Publications Ltd. Jun 2007

(c) 2007 Direct Response. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.