1. Plan.

Develop your marketing goals first and then choose the mobile marketing components that will best help you reach your goals.

2. Ask permission.

Ask your customers how and if they want you to communicate with them:

• Ask them to opt in (resist the urge to just buy a list of cell phone numbers and email addresses and start “spamming” that list incessantly)
• Ask them which types of communication they prefer (SMS? Email? Other?)
• Ask them how often they want you to communicate with them (Daily? Monthly? Only about a specific topic? Only when there’s a special offer?)

3. Don’t overdo it.

A customer’s cell phone is a personal thing. You don’t want your customer to get frustrated that they’ve received excessive messaging from you and then opt out – leaving them annoyed and you with no opportunity to message them again.

4. Optimize for mobile.

If you’re driving your customer to a website via a “click-through,” make sure that the website page that you’re sending them to is optimized for viewing on a wireless device.  (The last thing you want is to get your customer half way there, and then make them so frustrated with the experience that they don’t read more about your product, place an order, or take the action you were driving them to the website to do.)

5. Measure, measure, measure!

Develop a plan to measure your results and determine whether your campaign was a success.  Carefully track click-throughs to your website, opt-outs, coupons redeemed, information downloaded, etc.

6. Make adjustments.

Use the measurement results from #5 above to tweak your campaign to find the perfect mobility marketing mix for your company and situation.

By following these simple rules, your customers will be happier with your communications–and you’ll see better results. Happy mobile marketing!

What have you learned from your mobile marketing experience?  Do you have some tips you’d like to share about communicating with customers?

Here’s an example that we can all relate to:  You leave your house mid-morning to run errands, only to find that about three hours later you’re famished, but don’t know where to go nearby to grab a bite to eat.  Making matters worse, you dig into your purse or pocket, only to come up with $2.73 in change. Yikes! Feed me now! But where? And with such limited funding!

Well, as luck might have it, you recently signed up for SMS alerts from your favorite eatery, and they proactively sent you a quick message shortly before noon, with a fabulous offer plus the address and directions to their nearby location on 5th and Main.  Now you, your stomach, and your wallet are happy and your opinion of that eatery has been elevated because they solved multiple problems for you.

Presenting a customer with a promise of special offers can often get them to opt-in to receive your SMSs. But you’ll be most successful when you send that SMS in a targeted manner.  Send them that SMS when they’re near your location.  Send them that SMS on a specific day or time that’s likely pertinent to your customer’s situation.  Send them an offer for something they’ve “liked” in the past.  Send them the exact location and directions to get to you, so they don’t have to even think about it.  In short:  solve their problem. Make it easy for them to do business with you.

The beauty of this problem-solving for your customers, fellow marketer, is that by targeting your marketing in this way, you’ll be solving your own problems as well. You’ll be getting an amazingly low cost per exposure, you won’t be wasting your marketing dollars on customers who aren’t likely to purchase from you,  and you’ll likely enjoy a greater number of conversions than many other forms of marketing you can use.  Another key point to note: unlike many other mobile marketing solutions: 98% of all wireless phones can accept SMS messages, whereas other solutions and apps require smartphones and data plans, which a much lower percentage of customer have.  Now that’s a win-win of problem solving for SMS!

How have you used SMS successfully in your marketing efforts? Have you helped solve a customer’s problem? Please share your ideas, we’d love to hear from you.

Fast forward to today where a vast and rapidly changing array of technology-fueled marketing components is available to us.  This ever-evolving menu can be overwhelming enough to make us all go “Mad:” Should we Tweet? Leverage 2D/Mobile Barcodes? Post on Facebook? Use digital media?  All of the above? It’s hard to keep up, but not being apprised of the latest components puts marketers at a serious disadvantage when developing a winning marketing plan.

You might wonder how a marketer uses 2D/Mobile Barcodes. As someone whose eyes roll to the back of my head when things get overly technical, I had to have quite a few experts explain to me how a Mobile Barcode works, and why a marketer like myself would want to use it.  Now I use them on a regular basis. To help you better assess whether Mobile Barcodes are right for you and your marketing campaign, I thought I’d share what I’d learned (minus the techno-babble).

Think about if you were selling a product and took an approach similar to one from back in the “Mad Men” days. Let’s say you have a fabulous new vacuum cleaner you want to sell.  You could post a billboard at a bus stop, but if the person getting on the bus is interested in your vacuum, how would he or she take immediate action?  And, how would you measure the effectiveness of your billboard?  Hmmm… the classic marketer’s dilemma.

Perhaps you try door-to-door sales or some other form of direct marketing to introduce your vacuum.  Unfortunately, because of the perceived intrusiveness of this type of marketing, consumers could close the door, hang up, or tune you out.

Enter Mobile Barcodes.  You may have seen some already.  They look like this:

Barcodes are packed with all sorts of information — information that helps you and your potential customer.  Here’s how. Let’s go back to that billboard. Instead of it being a static, un-measurable, un-actionable marketing medium, you could put a Mobile Barcode on it that would allow customers to scan the barcode with their mobile devices. If they do, any or all of the following can happen (it’s your marketing vehicle, so you can decide what to provide):

• they can receive a promotional coupon,
• be emailed or texted information,
• sign up for a free trial,
• get a price quote,
• watch a video,
• or enter to win a sweepstakes–you name it.

You can put the code on almost anything –magazines, billboards, direct mail, the Internet, TV ads, in-store displays, even cereal boxes. You can also track code scans in real-time and download reports that analyze usage by code, demographics, technographics, time and location – all highly important when your CMO asks, “How effective was your ad campaign?”

I’d like to believe that unlike other media, consumers don’t consider barcodes an intrusive way for us to market to them. In fact, ABI research recently noted that 80 percent of U.S. consumers surveyed expressed interest in scanning mobile barcodes. Another 69 percent said they’d scan a barcode to receive coupons and discounts.

Another bonus: if two weeks into your campaign you decide to change the information/coupon/offer, you don’t have to pay to change the billboard or magazine ad — just modify what customers will receive when they scan your mobile barcode and do so behind the scenes and inexpensively. According to Pontiflex, the average cost per a Mobile Barcode lead is approximately $0.60.  (Which makes answering another favorite CMO question, “How much did this ad campaign cost us?” more pleasant to answer.)

If you’re interested in trying this type of marketing approach, here are my recommendations:

• Start Small!! – Begin with a trial
• Provide Value – Give consumers a compelling reason to scan
• Alert the Consumer – In the event they haven’t done so already, explain to consumers how, for free, they can download the mobile scanner to their mobile device.
• Measure Results – Review the results of your campaign, refine your approach and repeat success

The net-net? This type of mobile marketing solution lets potential customers connect with your brand at the point of interest for a more meaningful, measurable and connected experience…. And hopefully it’ll help keep you from going “Mad!”

Have you implemented barcodes in any of your marketing materials?

What other interesting uses has your company found for mobile barcodes?