5 Big Tips for Better Mobile Marketing

Sophorn Chhay contributed today's post. He is the inbound marketer at Trumpia, a mobile content delivery service that lets users customize their one-to-one marketing.

Sure, you might have a mobile marketing plan. But is it innovative?

In 2016, run-of-the-mill approaches won't take you very far; and, although most mobile marketers follow year-long plans, the fact is effective mobile marketing requires constant innovation.

If you want to stay ahead, check out the following tips, guaranteed to boost your results.

Tip One: Get Tight with Video Ads

Today, 80 percent of Internet users carry smartphones, and buyers are responding to video ads at alarming rates. You can benefit massively from video advertising.

Tip Two: Get Automated with SMS

Did you know you can automate your own SMS campaigns? Better yet, you can segment your audience and shoot out customized text messages. To get automated with SMS, contact a trustworthy provider. Textpedite, among others, streamlines the process.

Tip Three: Distribute an App

Americans currently spend more time using mobile apps than they do watching television. By incorporating an app into your plans, you'll give your brand greater meaning. Marketers are already reworking their entire strategies around apps (airlines, for example, are offering “nearby eatery” apps to frequent flyers). But make your app count, if you want to see it used.

Tip Four: Gain Data from SMS Surveys

Feedback means a lot to customers, and it's easy to conduct business when you know your customers' wants, needs and buying habits. SMS surveys procure a wealth of data and can garner otherwise unobtainable feedback.

Tip Five: Create a Social Campaign

In today’s mobile world, antisocial companies drop like flies, while companies like Starbucks win big. The brand’s “Race Together” and “Create Jobs for the USA” campaigns proved that promoting altruistic causes works. Sure, goodwill is a byproduct of powerful business practices; but it’s also a byproduct of social outreach.

Containers of the Past

For nearly 200 years, Americans used stoneware to keep perishable food. It was, in fact, the predominant houseware of the 19th century.

The ceramic containers were heavy and expensive to ship, so stoneware potteries cropped up everywhere to serve local markets.

But after 1913, when refrigerators were introduced, the once-ubiquitous potteries sputtered and failed.

You could say, refrigerators had a chilling effect on the stoneware business.

Today's refrigerator is, of course, the smartphone, as this week's Mobile World Congress makes clear.

And, as the event makes clear, the business without a mobile strategy today is the stoneware pottery of tomorrow.

As ad agency exec Rishad Tobaccowala says, "The future doe not fit in the containers of the past."

What's your mobile strategy?

Big Brother is Watching You. But Not for Long.

Marketers' abuse of mobile data, long before it triggers government regulation, will destroy consumers' trust in many major brands, according to Thomas Husson, an analyst with Forrester.

"Mobility will change the nature of the data marketers can use and act upon," Husson writes. 

"Via sensors on wearables or smartphones, marketers will access data on our bodies and our whereabouts in real-time."

The almighty nature of mobile data, Husson believes, will tempt marketers to break consumers' anonymities—and their trust as well.

Marketers who think of privacy as just some "legal and compliance issue" are riding for a fall.

"Consumers are increasingly aware of the value of their data and expect brands to deliver clear benefits in exchange of the personal data they share," Husson says. 

"Moving forward, we believe consumers will increasingly take control of the brand relationship via mobile trusted agents. Brand trust will be built on mobile experiences. In fact, brands’ survival will depend on their ability to build trust."