It’s important to remember that mobile marketing is about people not devices.  The devices provide the platform and tools to engage, but you are still attempting to reach living, breathing human beings in all their rational and irrational glory.

Here are three people-centric ways you can go wrong with mobile marketing.

1. Abuse Consumer Permission

The mobile phone is a highly personal consumer extension. For many people it’s the most direct conduit into their lives. It’s no accident that one of the most often bandied about phrases regarding mobile is ‘always on, always with, always personal’. While this presents great opportunities for marketers to gain direct access to consumer preferences and intentions, it can also be a slippery slope if one isn’t careful about they communicate with consumers that have taken that first step and ‘opted-in’ to a marketing program.

Publisher Simon & Schuster recently got dinged for $90 million in damages for sending unsolicited text messages to consumers. If you can get a consumer to engage your brand via mobile, whether through SMS, an application or the mobile web, you have to take care to manage how any future communication is rolled out. The best approach is to explicitly ask the consumer if they want to receive future communications. You can take that one step further by getting a consumer to define the type of communication they would like to receive, when they would like to receive it and how often you can send them information.

This kind of thinking gives you more information about who you’re talking to and increases the relevance of your content. You’re happy because you’re increasing the depth of engagement. The consumer’s happy because you’re offering increased value.

2. Fail to account for context

Since the mobile is always on and always with, it’s intimately tied to what a consumer is doing at any moment and where they are. This creates a fertile ground for offering a deep utility to consumer action and habits. Applications which leverage location based technology provide the best use case for enriched utility, but even SMS marketing needs to account for context. Delivering coupons through point of sale media offers immediate value and can aid purchase intent, for example.

Content should be ’snackable’. Genuine and practical utility should be baked in to any experience. Ask yourself what are you trying to achieve and where consumers are likely to be when they’re interacting with you. More often than not, they will not be stationary, they will be on the go looking to meet an immediate need or want or entertain themselves.

3. Missing out on ‘bridging’ opportunities

Other than abusing consumer permission, creating a shallow mobile experience is the most common mistake I see in mobile programming.  This can be as simple as a text to win contest which doesn’t offer an opt-in for future information. More commonly, I see mobile advertising campaigns where the post-click experience simply fails to account for the fact the consumer is engaging via a mobile. This includes linking to a non-mobile optimized website. But I’ve also seen badly designed sites with no functionality such as an automotive advertiser who’s mobile site doesn’t include features like a dealership locator, a test-drive sign up form or even an email submit or click to call for more information.

If you’ve gotten a consumer to click on your ad why would you not take full advantage of this by extending the experience and bridging to another destination – either on the mobile device or into the ‘real world’.

As marketers become savvier at developing mobile experiences, these types of issues will (hopefully) fade into history. Keeping the consumer front of mind in any campaign design thinking is vital. The mobile device is just a tool, though one rich with features and a powerful platform for direct-to-consumer engagement. Focussing on the device rather than the user will lead you down the wrong path.  Take care to avoid these three pitfalls and you’ll be that much closer to earning (and keeping) your share of mobile.

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Mobile As A Technology Platform

When assessing mobile as a technology platform and how it impacts communications, we must consider three main factors: connectivity, location awareness and the enabling of transactions.  This article started with the claim that mobile is ‘always on’. Take that one step further and consider how the mobile consumer is always accessible. It’s not just that the device is always powered on; it’s also that the consumer is always available.  The expectation is that you can reach someone no matter where they are or what they are doing.

There are many ways to connect to that someone. Voice calls for something personal, important or even entertaining. Text messages can be for concise messages and emails for something that requires more explanation.  But mobile is not a one-way broadcast. Mobile enables two way communications.  Calls are answered, messages replied to, actions taken as a result of content that’s consumed or instructions that are received. The public relations industry has embraced social media for its ability to create conversations between organizations and their stakeholders. While there are limitations to the mobile platform that make ‘conversations’ difficult, mobile stands beside the internet as a channel offering the tools for a genuine dialogue, a connection, between parties.  For the PR professional, the key is to understand that mobile enables consumer response in real -time, no matter where they are or what they are doing. However, context cannot be ignored. Connectivity leads to contextual relevance.

Many newer model handsets come equipped with GPS technology that adds a new layer to consumer location and context. Even without such spatial awareness, the personal nature of the mobile device implies consideration of what the consumer is doing and where they might be and crafting messaging and calls to action that exploit a consumer’s context and environment.  The Canadian Marketing Association’s white paper on mobile, Personal, Powerful, Pervasive: Future of Mobile is ‘In Hand’, notes that “The marketing trifecta for mobile is immediacy, location and personalization.”

The ability to deliver a message that is directly relevant to a consumer’s context is powerful as it enables a customized response that can potentially motivate a specific behaviour in response to experienced circumstances. David Jones, vice president, digital at Hill & Knowlton Canada, rates location-awareness as one of the most important mobile features saying, “Anything you can provide to someone on the go to make the experience hyper-local is incredibly useful. It adds relevance and responsiveness to a real-world experience.”

Along with being a self-sustained media channel, mobile can also act as a bridge to other things and places. Mobile enables transactions. On the self-sustaining side, mobile can take a consumer through a series of actions. A banner ad click or a sent SMS can lead to a phone call, a web visit or a download to the handset. But what is even more interesting is how mobile can spur action outside the confines of the handset. “Mobile’s presence at the consumer’s side means it can serve as a powerful gateway where a marketer is taking the consumer from a point of interaction to a point of action,” says Mr. Murphy. “Marketers are starting to leverage mobile’s transactional nature through mobile coupons and tickets to drive a consumer from a media interaction to a retail visit, for example. I’d say that PR people can use those same principles to spur cause-based actions, enhance event experiences or to aid response in certain crisis situations like product recalls.”

A study by market research firm Razorfish supports this point of view by arguing in its 2008 digital outlook report that SMS is a perfect example of a very personal and relevant communication form that can be used to facilitate direct response into the upper rungs of a consumer’s social hierarchy. If a message is allowed onto a consumer’s mobile device it is because it is meaningful for them in an immediate and satisfying way.

For the public relations professional, the key lesson is that you can use mobile to move very quickly from message acceptance to consumer action provided you are providing an experience where the value exchange (on either a commercial or psychological level) is weighted in favour of the user.

Next up: Mobile as a content platform

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