What is Mobile Marketing and How Will it Affect Your Business

“As seen in the February 2010 Advertising & Marketing Review.
By Kim Dushinski

It seems that the “year of mobile” has been declared enough times that it certainly must have come and gone already. According to the GSM Association (www.gsmworld.com), it is estimated there are over four billion cell phone subscriptions worldwide giving mobile a 60% worldwide adoption rate. In the U.S. there is an 89% adoption rate with cell phone subscriptions numbering over 276 million. Clearly the “year of consumers getting mobile phones” has indeed come and gone.

What hasn’t happened yet is widespread business use of mobile as a marketing channel. It is still early days but companies are jumping on board quickly. Large corporations from McDonald’s to Coca-Cola to Wal-Mart are undertaking mobile campaigns. Media like USA Today, Hearst magazines; Bravo TV and Clear Channel are aggressively pursuing mobile interaction with their audiences. Small businesses, too, are jumping on board with simple mobile coupon campaigns.

Mobile has not saturated marketing yet though. The “year of mobile marketing” is yet to come. It is the next digital frontier and, mark my words, it is coming fast.

What is Mobile Marketing Anyway?

Recently the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) updated their definition of mobile marketing to state that mobile marketing is “A set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network.”

There are some key components in this definition that are worth examining. First of all, you’ll notice that the MMA refers to mobile devices, not cell phones. That’s because our phones have become much more than a way to make a simple phone call wherever we want.

In addition to voice calls, cell phones can send and receive text and instant messages; give us Internet access; and provide GPS navigation. Our phones are also cameras, alarm clocks, calculators, calendars, note taking devices, workout trackers, gaming devices, music players, and more depending upon what applications we load on it.

Cell phones are so valuable to us that we keep these powerful devices with us at all times. It is the power of the device and how attached we are to them that drives the potential of the mobile marketing channel.

All of this begs the question of whether or not consumers want to be the recipients of mobile marketing. Of course no one wants to ‘be marketed to.’ However, everyone wants to have relevant information at their fingertips when they look for it or have it delivered to them when they have explicitly asked for it.

Mobile marketing done properly provides relevant value to consumers. That’s why the MMA made sure to put the word relevant in their definition. Relevant communication can be achieved using a variety of tools from the mobile marketing toolbox, thus the concept of “any device or network.”

Tools of Mobile Marketing

Contrary to what you might think (based on what is hot in the news and how many of your colleagues have one) there are many more tools in mobile marketing than those that are iPhone related. In fact, iPhone-specific mobile marketing only reaches a tiny fraction of the overall mobile market. Yes, these are the most voracious users of mobile data, but iPhone users are not the biggest market segment.

According to Tomi Ahonen, author of the several best selling books on mobile and a leading mobile consultant, “The iPhone currently (June, 2009) has a little over 10 million active users in the USA on the AT&T network at which time it meant that 4% of all Americans with a cell phone had an iPhone.” Disabuse your mind that mobile marketing is synonymous with the iPhone, otherwise you risk missing out on 96% of the mobile market.

SMS (Text Messaging)

The single most used tool on mobile by consumers besides voice calls is SMS (commonly known as text messaging). No, it is not just teens who use text messaging either. A study done by Nielsen in 2008 showed that, up to and including the age bracket of 35-44, Americans send more text messages than make phone calls on their mobile phones.

Text messaging can be used in marketing with explicit permission by the consumer only. It takes smart and effective marketing to get consumers to opt in to a text message campaign. But it works like a charm when it is done well.

Recently, Pizza Hut ran a campaign to share the news about their new Hershey’s Dunkers. They ran a contest to win free pizza every month for a year. In two weeks they got 2,000 people to enter the contest via text message. Even more exciting is that they got 54% of these people to agree to get weekly text message alerts about Pizza Hut exclusive deals sent directly to their phone. This is an example of the type of relevant information that consumers are willing to agree to receive.

SMS campaigns can be mobile coupons, alerts, text clubs, and exclusive offers of discounts or content. Text messaging is simple, but powerful. It is also underutilized. SMS marketing is a huge opportunity for businesses right now.

Mobile Websites

Morgan Stanley released a 424 page report about the mobile internet that, among other many things, predicted that the mobile Internet market will be at least twice as big as the desktop Internet market. Excitement abounds for the mobile web.

Unfortunately the mobile web experience is less than stellar for most consumers at this point in time. Despite the results shown in an iCrossing study that 84% of mobile web users expect websites they visit frequently to provide a dedicated mobile version of their site, few do.

One huge misconception around the mobile web is that as long as the site will technically work on a phone, it is mobile friendly. Not so. Businesses need to take into account that mobile web use is entirely different than desktop use. People want fast, easy access to the information they are most likely to want when they are mobile.

Just because powerful phones like the iPhone, Palm Pre and other smartphones can handle a full sized site, it doesn’t mean that consumers using these phones have time to wade through an entire site pinching and squeezing their way to the data they need. You need to offer a well thought out mobile website that works on a wide variety of mobile devices that provides the most relevant information possible.

Mobile Advertising

Google’s purchase of AdMob and Apple’s acquisition of Quattro Wireless, both leading mobile ad networks, indicate that mobile advertising has hit the big time. Both of these giants in technology and marketing understand that mobile’s time to shine is now.

Mobile advertising is similar to Internet advertising in that it is largely comprised of banner and text ads that appear on websites (mobile sites in this case). But it is a lot more as well. Ads can also appear within applications, as applications and even within text messages.

Ads can be extremely well targeted – by demographics, type of cell phone, location (in some cases) and even with knowledge of the mobile web browsing habits of the phone. If you are planning any sort of an advertising campaign, it would be well worth your time to investigate the possibilities of mobile advertising.

Mobile Email

According to Deborah Hall CEO, Web2Mobile, “Currently 0.8 percent of email newsletters are optimized for mobile, yet 20 to 30 percent of folks are checking their email on mobile devices.” If you are sending email as part of your marketing and your customer checks that email on their mobile device, you are now mobile marketing – whether you intended to be or not.

What if that email is unreadable? What if it crashes the phone of the person who is trying to read it? These things happen every day to unsuspecting marketers who assume that their email is being read on a desktop computer with a 17 inch monitor. It may not be. Make sure that all email marketing you do is mobile friendly.

At a minimum emails must be readable by a multitude of mobile devices. This means that emails built around a graphic platform won’t work. HTML renders horribly on most mobile phones and PDF files that open as beautiful images showing elaborate emails simply do not even open.

Much the same as with mobile websites, the content needs to adapt to the mobile environment. Shorter articles are necessary and the call to action should include a phone number more often than a web link. Navigation should be moved to the bottom of the email and not take up valuable real estate at the top.Apps

iPhone apps are a siren song to marketers. They are fun, sexy and cool. Everyone is talking about them. Clients want them because they hear all the hype and excitement about them in the media. They can be a good marketing tool – as long as it is not the only mobile marketing undertaken. As mentioned at the outset of this section, iPhone users only comprise roughly 4% of the mobile market. What other marketing tools would you use that ignored 96% of your potential customers?

Apps can be created as a product to be sold, a branding tool, or advertising can be placed within other company’s applications. A detailed strategy should be put in place well before any apps start being created.

Remember, too, that there are other app stores that you might want to consider. Like Blackberry’s App World, Android Market, Palm’s App Catalog or Nokia’s Ovi Store. iPhone is not the only app game in town.

Who Should Use Mobile Marketing

At this time, the best use for mobile marketing is in a business to consumer situation. Business to business works best with mobile within the limited scope of trade shows, conventions and other business related events.

Within the business to consumer markets, mobile marketing works especially well for restaurants, night clubs, casinos, hotels and retailers. There is a huge opportunity in mobile for non-profits to use it for donor communication as well as getting donations.

Bottom line, if you are working with a business that is looking for more customers, wants to retain the customers they already have or wants to increase purchases from current customers, mobile marketing should be considered.


Kim Dushinski is the author of The Mobile Marketing Handbook. She works with marketing professionals and entrepreneurs offering training and tools in mobile marketing. Find out more about how she can help you with mobile marketing at www.MobileMarketingProfits.com.