Mobile marketing best practices

Understanding mobile marketing's best practices (or what there are of them thus far, as this market is continually evolving), is an important part of making sure your mobile campaign is successful. There are a wide variety of channels that one can use when approaching mobile marketing, and it can be integrated (and should be integrated) rather well with the other, more traditional forms of marketing. The following are some questions to ask yourself to insure you are conforming to the mobile marketing best practices:

1. Does your mobile marketing plan take into consideration how consumers are using mobile media? The best mobile marketing approaches involve doing some research about how your potential consumers are using their mobile devices. Knowing how mobile devices are used will allow you to create a marketing plan that leverages those uses.

2. Does your plan use the functionality of mobile devices? Mobile marketing is best approached if you leverage what is available, and functional on mobile devices. In other words, if they can text, use it, if they can take video and picture, use it, if they can browse the internet, use it. Know what kinds of mobile devices your consumers are using, and what they are capable of, and take advantage of that, creating marketing plans the incorporate each of these things.

3. Does the mobile experience translate well onto mobile devices? You can work hard to create a mobile experience you think will please, but if it loads too slowly, is too invasive, or doesn't meet a consumer need, it may not take root. The idea is to make sure that it is not just good in theory but in application as well. If it works well on a mobile device, you are set. Check to insure you do not have too large of image files, or anything that will take too long to load on a slower mobile browser, as slow load times can turn a customer off to your potential offering.

4. Does your mobile experience provide value to your consumers? This is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself when it comes to all forms of marketing, but especially mobile marketing as it is so personal. Because it is personal, and portable, and people always have their mobile devices with them, you can't just throw something at them. It will annoy and alienate them, rather than engage them. You can to make sure it is personal to them, and important to them, and that it provides value to them. If you can do this with your mobile device and mobile marketing plan, you will see that mobile marketing, integrated with your other marketing options is going to have a huge impact.

In other words, appeal to what your consumers are already doing, make it easy and functional (think options like click to call), and make sure it is fast, and provides value to your consumers.