Increase conversions from Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is a huge potential source of traffic, customers and profit for your business, but as yet fairly untapped. Yet, over the next three years, it is predicted that more than half current internet users will be accessing the web via mobiles and other handheld devices.

Mobile marketing offers a very personal kind of interactivity for relationship building with your prospects. It’s not just about bombarding folk with text SMS marketing messages. Mobile friendly web sites and mobile applications mean marketers can reach a much greater target audience.

The statistics are pretty convincing and competition in the mobile direct marketing arena is still comparatively low.
Growth in mobile customers

World wide there are 4 billion people with mobile phones. In fact, there are almost five times more cell phone owners than laptops and computer owners, especially home internet ready.

Gartner, the IT research company, predicts that over the next three years over half current internet users will be accessing the web via mobiles and other handheld devices.

“There are clear opportunities for mobile transactions to grow as users, in this and previous surveys, indicate that they want to be able to use their mobiles to buy more goods, such as books, music, travel services, household utilities and electronic appliances,” says BuzzCity CEO, KF Lai.

It’s a very global trend. BuzzCity’s recent survey questioned 1,798 mobile users across the Americas, Asia, Africa, Western Europe and the Middle East and showed that 90% had directly purchased products or services via their mobile.
The trend towards mobile marketing

It’s no surprise really that the fastest growing marketing technologies and emerging channels are mobile, rich media and social media. You only have to do a search on some of the popular keywords for the internet marketing and online home business industry to see how these methods are all being adopted with enthusiasm by marketers.

Unica just released its “The State of Marketing 2010” results from the latest Global Survey of Marketers and there are some astounding findings.

The survey reported that “Nearly half of marketers surveyed have already embraced social media marketing, and adoption is healthy across most social media outlets, such as blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. However, marketers need to think more about integrating social media with other marketing tactics.”

Despite the rapid increases in the potential audience, “mobile marketing” is a relatively new practice. The term describes marketing on or with a mobile device, such as a cell phone using WAP or text messaging to communicate between the business and the customer.

Mobile marketing is increasing in significance with over 30% of marketers surveyed already using some form or other of mobile marketing and many sources of information (magazines, and services available to support them.

Nevertheless, mobile advertising has grown over the past 1-2 years (almost 100% in the UK), despite the economic recession. The total is pretty small compared to advertising on the internet, which last year was higher than that spent on TV.

However, the Mobile Marketing Association suggests the growth in mobile marketing is likely to accelerate as handsets equipped with new technology, including mobile broadband, become ubiquitous and consumer behaviour changes.

The response from marketing vendors isn’t far behind. For instance, 84444.com recently launched its Do-it-Yourself mobile marketing campaigns that can be run from the convenience of a desktop computer. YouTube is making huge changes to its mobile web presence and has now begun incorporating adverts throughout its mobile site.
How to tap into the mobile market

Anyone in business should always be looking for new ways to reach out and touch their customers and build attention from new prospects. And mobile marketing may just be the golden ticket.

Your mobile user is permanently switched-on, impulsive and ready to interact at the drop of a hat. Who wouldn’t want to tap into mobile marketing? It’s the ultimate direct response tool.

Mobile marketing, you could argue, is perhaps a rather more captive audience. When someone has their phone in their hand and downloads a page, they are much engaged than on a desktop based website. It’s a much more powerful direct response tool than the internet.

Conversions from mobiles compared to web or email marketing are five times higher. And, obviously competition is much lower because nobody really knows about this yet.

So what changes do you need to make in your business to attract mobile clients?

Well, first you should make sure your website is mobile friendly, especially if you are sending text SMS messages with active web links to your mobile contacts. There’s a tonne of reasons why this is important, but mostly because mobile is an instant and impulsive kind of medium, so you want the recipient to be able to follow the link and get to a useful page and quickly.

Consider that subscriber on your email list may well be reading their messages on their phone. So you want to keep your main message and link ‘above the fold’ to use a newspaper term. To clarify: when you’re accessing emails from a mobile, sometimes the longer ones will get truncated so put your link early on and remember the rules of compelling headlines.

But also, as with the SMS, your mobile user should be able to click your call to action link in the email and bring up the page right there and then from their phone’s web browser. The chances they will visit your website when they get back to their PC are far lower.

Google is actively hunting for decent mobile enabled sites to feature in its search results, since this is a huge source of revenue for them if their users are happy. There’s not enough mobile sites out there. So learn how to create a Google-friendly mobile version of your site and you could rank higher than for your regular desktop site.

There’s a whole spectrum of solutions for making your webpage mobile friendly. These range from the simple and cheap like adding a bit of code you add to your wordpress blog to a more complex and expensive decision to create a complete and total mobile website.

Getting your site indexed by Google on the mobile search engine?

Google have mobile site maps distinct from the usual site maps. Check out their webmaster tools for help on that. And get yourself listed in the Google local business listings. Google has a way you can build a mobile landing page within that tool. It works best for brick and mortar businesses, but it’s all good web presence.

Google knows that people search differently on their mobiles than they do on their desktop. They actually have a specific mobile keyword research tool. Not a bad idea, then, to clue up the whole different algorithms search engines are using for mobile searching.

Another thing to remember to keep your mobile text ads short, mirroring the style of social networking conversations. Opera (one of the mobile browsers) statistics show that 41% of people accessing the mobile web are going to social network sites, so myspace, facebook, twitter. These are intertwined and meshed together as a tool, so these ads need to work together.

You want to add a mobile phone field to your web page capture form if you currently capture your visitors’ names and email addresses. With a list of numbers, you can unleash your mobile direct marketing power by sending automated, scheduled SMS or text messages to your subscribers.

Internet marketers have known for years the money is in the relationship with your email list. As mobile marketing gets unleashed, it’s likely your phone list will become the gold standard.

SMS has an astounding 97% open rate – and usually within the first 5 minutes of receiving the message. That’s powerful to marketers! If the “autotexter” replaces the autoresponder, do you have a business strategy for that dramatic change?

Early adopters ALWAYS make the most money. So go check out mobile marketing and see what a difference it can make in your business.

Some practical mobile marketing methods

I’ve said it before and will continue to pound the table on the state of Mobile Marketing right now — It’s crazy-hot. Needless to say as a business owner, it’s absolutely the right time to embrace various mobile platforms and develop a plan for marketing your business in the midst of this new paradigm. Truth be told, you’ll have everything to gain and nothing to lose by becoming an early adapter. So with that, let’s forge ahead with my Top 5 ‘Must-Use’ Mobile Marketing Methods, which by the way, can be implemented quickly, with relative ease, and for next to nothing cost-wise.

Mobile Marketing Method #1: Mobile-Enable Your Website

First you’ll want to do a web search for “mobile emulator” and look for mtld.mobi. What you will accomplish here will be to reveal how your site appears to millions of mobile users. this handy mobile marketing tool emulates mobile phone web browsers. It’s cool because you can look at your website as if viewing it on different mobile handsets.

Some points to consider: Your site may display as a mini version of your full site. Or, you may not be able to view it at all. If the latter, not good. Hence you’ll need to mobile-enable it; sooner the better. In the event you can view your site on a mobile, you’re on the right track, but please be advised of new developments that are beginning to come to the fore. I use both paid-for and free services to mobile-enable my web properties, Of course, the free ones aren’t quite as feature-rich. However, they get you going in the right direction. For example, Blogger now has a mobile-enable feature. There are free WordPress plugins that a worth experimenting with and also, Bing Business Portal are doing some pretty cool mobile stuff that melds nicely with their Facebook partnership. The best part, these won’t cost you a penny.

Another and perhaps more important element to mobile-enabling your site is MSEO. That’s ‘Mobile Search Engine Optimization’ and it’s something that will be attracting massive amounts of buzz in the coming months. So this is the perfect segue to method number two…

Mobile Marketing Method #2: Mobile SEO

If I were to write a Business Owner’s Bible, I think mastering Mobile SEO would be the holy grail for Mobile Marketing. Suffice to say that the ability to Optimize your website for the mobile search engines is tantamount to building a solid mobile marketing foundation. Obviously, Being found on mobile devices is first and foremost. After all, showing up is half the battle.

Next, it would be wise to build a mobile sitemap. Simply go to your Google Webmaster Tools Account, set that up and submit accordingly. Using this action step you will probably be 90% smarter than your competition who might be oblivious to such do-it-yourself tactics. One thing’s for sure, Mobile Marketing won’t wait for laggards. As is true in most businesses, gaining a competitive advantage is all about timing and positioning.

Speaking of positioning, as it holds true with regular ol’ SEO, backlinks rule. Mobile Directories come in handy here. Go grab some links from other mobile sites and watch for improvements in your search results.

Mobile Marketing Method #3: Employ the Hcard Micro-format

Okay, don’t worry, it’s not brain surgery, it’s just your own “crawler-friendly” business info displayed in a format that MSEOs will “appreciate” when queried for local business data. Just like SEO you want these engines to locate your business quickly, thus enabling prospective customers to find you in a snap on their mobile devices. Here’s a tip: Search “Hcard Creator” to build your code, then and place it on your site where you display your contact information.

Mobile Marketing Method #4: Join Foursquare (For Business)

Now moving on to the fun part. First, sign up for Foursquare’s free Merchant Platform and by all means, claim your venue. Understand that Foursquare is part of the fastest growing segment of social networking right now, so if you’ve shied away from Foursquare (or you live under a rock), it’s time to get your game on because quite literally, that’s what it is — a game. Only in this social networking game, folks will use your business as a “check-in” point not virtually, but in the real world using Foursquare’s app to compete for perks such as mobile coupons and such. Foursquare’s merchant tools are great and your customers will just eat this up on their way to becoming the “Mayor” of whatever. Trust me, it’s a fun way to find new
customers and keep the old ones coming back for more.

Mobile Marketing Method #5: Start A Facebook Business Page

Don’t tell me you don’t have one. Okay, we’ll just assume you do and go from there. By the way, you should know one thing about Facebook. It’s the only company on Earth that Google fears. Facebook is where your customers, and most Internet users for that matter are spending their time. On average these folks are on Facebook about 55 minutes per day. So if you were wondering where the eyes are on the web, now you know. You already know most people using Facebook are practically addicted to it; constantly checking their Facebook on their mobile devices. So there you go. Start communicating with your customers on your Facebook business page. Simply keep your page up-to-date and your people apprised as to what’s happening with your business.

Very important: Offer an enticing “Facebook Deal”… The good news is that Facebook will actually assist in promoting within your local area.

Mobile Marketing BONUS Method: Build A Text Message (SMS) Marketing list As Fast As You Can

Okay, listen to me, hehe, I’m pounding the table on this one again. I mention this BONUS method simply because it’s the fastest, cheapest, most efficient way to get new customers ever conceived in the history of marketing, bar none! I can’t be anymore emphatic in expressing my opinion about this — SMS is the future of contact management. I’m assuming you know the value of a good email list, right? Well, I’m not saying that you should abandon your current email marketing program, but know this: Open rates for business emails are anemic, 20% in a best case scenario compared to an astounding 95% open rates for Text. I’ve read up to 97% in some publications, but looking at the numbers, this is a no-brainer for any local business seeking to add more customers, get more sales, make more money, etc, etc, etc. That’s because SMS (Short Message Service) Text Marketing is by far, the best return on investment opportunity in your marketing budget.

So my final word on this is to say, do not underestimate the power of your own “text keyword” and “shortcode” as these can and should be your next revenue-generating project. Keep in mind, your
customers will be opting into your SMS list and they WILL be looking forward to your offers, coupons and updates via text. I predict that at the end of the day, your response ratios will blow you away.

Chuck Anthony is a home-based entrepreneur and internet marketer dedicated to helping like-minded individuals and small businesses in their quest toward gaining a competitive advantage in their niche. For more timely advice visit the Better Affiliate Network site.

Best Practice Guidelines for Mobile Marketing

If the internet was the platform for information: then mobile is becoming the channel for accessibility (of content information). The statistics and projections definitely support this theory with a staggering number of mobile users. In 2009, 34 million U.S. consumers used their mobile devices to access the internet; and industry forecast projects this number will substantially succeed 106 million by 2014.

Seizing the advantages and benefits of mobile marketing and considering these figures are not only guaranteed to increase your company’s audience or consumer base; but can be a huge factor in expanding knowledge and accessibility of your brand’s awareness. No matter if you’re an existing SMB or local business owner or big-brand decision maker who’s currently utilizing any form of mobile marketing concepts for your company’s needs, there’s a major deciding difference between ‘just having a mobile marketing’ presence and driving the bottom line or P/L’s for your business. Ironically, it all begins with your mobile strategies.

So, if you’re current initiatives aren’t just driving your business in these diverse channels, here is a “5-Step Guideline for Boosting Your Mobile Marketing Strategies” to ensure such returns for your business’ needs and to offer you a jump-start on developing your 2012 marketing initiatives.

Step 1: Pre-planning: This is the stage of information gathering and sound-boarding for your strategy setting areas. Consider identifying the: What? (…your business wants to accomplish with your mobile marketing efforts & consumers want to access.) How? (…your business wants to reach and gain such returns & thereby interact with consumers.) Where? (…which mobile platforms and devices you want to include in your marketing initiatives & what platforms are your consumers on.) Once you have identified a solid comprehension of these questions, you will then have a clearer and more tailored plan of execution for the next stages and can insert those solutions for positioning your mobile strategies. Your business should strongly consider the profiles of your mobile customers and understand the varying behaviors of such users. Providing the “3: I’s” Interesting content, Instant retrieval and Insightful information will ensure those mobile marketing efforts are highly warranted by the mass majority.

Step 2: Infrastructure: In this phase, consider those back-end or general housekeeping protocols for better empowering or boosting your developed mobile strategies. Consider claiming all of your local listings; delivering your business listings to all online, mobile and data listing search engines. Claim your online social identity platforms; ensuring your touch points that mobile users will be accessing are in place. Think about various channels of integration via social and search media and building upon those created social signals. As we all know Facebook users are more likely to recommend products and services to their friends and that Twitter followers are more connected to their liked brands. Also, make sure you have the necessary systems in place for you business to handle the additional mobile traffic and implemented mobile strategies; whether it be in metrics, tech systems or team/man-power. You want to have those components in place for all your developed services to constantly yield repeat returns.

Step 3: A Mobile Website: This can and should be the first stage in your mobile efforts. Redesigning your current website to be better compatible for any mobile device is extremely important. This is vital in ensuring that not only the design and aesthetics are intriguing, but your site can be viewed on any of the hundreds of mobile devices, smart phones and tablets. Also note having a mobile website can also be a huge metrics machine for gathering mobile feedback and related user ability statistics of your consumer base and an effective tool for making bettering decisions and understanding what mobile users are gaining from your site and the how (devices).

Step 4: Diversified Integrated Platforms: Now that you’ve gotten your feet and knees wet a bit and maybe have gone a lot deeper in your mobile marketing areas, you can and should consider integrating diverse cross-channels into your mobile marketing plans. Having a robust multichannel approach opens up more returns and access; thereby increasing your odds and sales and traffic. Your current options are: Text/SMS, Mobile Applications & Gaming, Proximity Marketing (opt-in services of Blue-tooth & Wifi), Location Based Services Networks, Video Marketing and other (MMS) Multimedia Marketing Messages, and QR codes. Learn more about Integrated Marketing.

Step 5: Constant Promotions & Updates: Taking all the mobile marketing areas and structures that your company has implemented and executed here is where you will begin to expand/broaden that word and mobile awareness to constantly increase users to your mobile sites. Letting them know that you’re using mobile marketing, QR codes, or other components by marketing this on your company’s website, adding to email and other print marketing or PR releases. If you have a web application, use an outside consultant who can boost your marketing initiatives to get the usage higher on those mobile devices or maybe even consider using a mobile ad platform like AdMob. Constantly updating and improving upon your current mobile initiatives will help you keep your mobile strategies fresh and highly appealing. Ideally these improvements should be built around and from the reporting metrics and analytics that any of these digital (mobile) platforms all provide. This is the phase where you can and should take the leap of becoming a mobile marketing maven and hopefully setting standards with your efforts, like Apple, Chase or Bank of America, Urbanspoon, and those prominent other successful brands of today who are shaping the landscape for mobile marketing.

Still not sure where or how to begin? Need additional outside expert and consulting help with your mobile marketing initiatives? Not a problem let Purview | Creative Strategy & Design assist you with those mobile marketing initiatives. Contact us for a free 15-minute Mobile Marketing Assessment today @ http://www.yourpurview.com or reach us at: 877-394-3601.

The Meaning of some different Mobile Marketing definitions

To many people, the term mobile marketing is often thought of as simply some form of advertisement sent to a mobile phone from a company or advertising service. At one point, this definition might have been correct, but mobile marketing has moved far beyond the simple act of delivering an advertisement to a mobile phone. In fact, the term mobile marketing can now be considered something of an umbrella term to cover all the aspects of delivering or receiving information with their target audience through a mobile device. The Mobile Marketing Association has recently updated their definition of mobile marketing to show this change.

Their definition states: “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.” Increasingly, mobile marketers are shifting from pushing content to the consumer to a new model which is more interactive and engages with the consumer in an interesting or meaningful way.

There are many advertising methods which fall under the category of mobile marketing:

• * Mobile Web Marketing
• * Location Based Services
• * SMS (short message service)
• * MMS (multimedia message service)
• * In-Game Marketing

What Other Types Of Advertisements And Mobile Marketing Definitions Do You Need To Know To Succeed?
Mobile web marketing consists of serving advertisements on websites specifically designed for mobile devices. This is a very common form of mobile advertisements and has been steadily growing. Many people access the internet through their smartphones and these phones do not usually have a full-scale browser to view the webpages. In order to accommodate this, the owners of the websites create customized versions of their webpages which are specifically suited to being viewed in the browsers of mobile phones. Since these pages are not the same as the regular webpages, new advertisements are provided for them. Advertising on these mobile web pages ensures that the ads are viewed by those using mobile devices. Usually, if clicked, these ads will take the viewer to the mobile optimised page of the advertiser. Companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are among the largest companies selling advertising space on their mobile content pages, specifically on their search pages.

A location-based service is one that allows an advertiser to send advertisements or other information to a mobile device based on its physical location. Location based services are offered by cell phone networks which are able to track the general location of a mobile phone user through the process of triangulation. If the mobile phone user has their GPS system turned on, that will also serve to identify their location in a much more specific way. Once the network is able to find out where the user is, the advertiser can send out an ad-based on that location. For example, if someone is walking down a street with a Starbucks on the corner, the location-based service can recognize that the person is near a Starbucks and send them an advertisement for the store. A more passive version of this is to locate a physical base station in a specific location. When someone comes into the vicinity that has authorized the network to send them messages, the base station can send location specific information or advertisements to their mobile device.

SMS marketing are advertisements served through text messages. This is a very common form of mobile marketing and one that can work in both directions. Advertisers can send messages to a network of mobile users all at once, while mobile users can send text messages back to the advertiser’s short code. The short code is the 5 or 6 digit number than many advertisers use in their SMS communications. One common example is after the earthquake struck Haiti, people were encouraged to text a message to 90999. That five digit number is the short code for the American Red Cross. The short code numbers are valid for all mobile carriers in a specific nation. They tend to be expensive so generally they are used by larger businesses.

MMS marketing is similar to SMS marketing but allows for more than simple text messages. Users can send pictures, video, or audio as well as texts to the company running the campaign. In some instances this can be used in real-time, such as Motorola joining with the House of Blues to provide real-time photos of concerts on a screen next to the stage.

In-game marketing are increasingly common with the rise in popularity of online games. One of the more common uses for in-game marketing are to provide relevant advertisements to a target population. For example, car companies often place in-game advertisements as banners in car racing games to advertise their brand or a specific car. This looks like it is part of the game, but the placement has been paid for. Another form for marketing is sponsorships of events or statistics. For example, Old Spice sponsors a statistic in the football game Madden 11 called Swagger. This coincided with the release of their new deodorant, also called Swagger.

As shown by the Mobile Marketing Association’s definition, mobile marketing covers a wide spectrum of activities. When mobile technology shifts and grows, the definition of mobile marketing has to grow along with it.

Mobile marketing can be difficult to wrap your head around at first. You must seek out the best in the business for their knowledge and expertise if you really want to take full advantage of this emerging media.

To find out how to get started in this new and exciting industry visit http://www.trendsinmobilemarketing.com/mobile-marketing-definition/ [http://www.trendsinmobilemarketing.com/mobile-marketing-definition/] for an inside look and to clarify anything you might be confused about. There are cutting edge trends, ways to make money and promote your business and lots of other advanced techniques you can take advantage of with mobile marketing.

Jobs in Mobile Internet Marketing

Mobile Marketing is a booming industry right now and that is only expected to grow exponentially in the future. As with any newly developing market, the jobs that are required to carry out the tasks do not yet exist or need to be tweaked from previously existing positions. People will need to either move from related positions into the new jobs or become educated and trained from the ground up to fill these spots. As the marketplace continues to develop, more people will be necessary to fill various strategic and creative positions. Some of these jobs will be more necessary than others and will become high demand positions subject to a healthy dose of competition between firms to retain the best and the brightest. The following four positions are jobs that are emerging in the new mobile marketing landscape and will become regular positions in many organizations in the near future.

What Are The Types Of Mobile Marketing Jobs

1. Mobile Marketing Strategist

A Mobile Marketing Strategist is the person that makes the key tactical decisions in the mobile marketing campaign. Essentially, the project manager, the person in this position will need to have a great deal of knowledge about the marketplace and mobile marketing strategy and implementation. This person doesn’t just make recommendation for strategy, they need to have the expertise to make recommendations and guide the client on decisions throughout the entire process. This includes guiding them towards the best application development and vendor engagement options for their campaign. In addition, a position like this will require strong market research skills and the ability to digest large amount of industry and market data into actionable recommendations and best practices. The Mobile Marketing Strategist position is a very demanding position that calls for a high level of expertise. Despite the pressure a position like this will cause, the rewards are also just a high.

2. Mobile Application Developer

A Mobile Application Developer is the person that creates the applications for the mobile platform on which the campaign will be deployed. There are two basic types of mobile application development, so a developer should be familiar with one or both of the processes. The first is taking existing applications, for example web applications for use on a computer through the internet, and converting that application into one that can be used through a mobile phone. The conversion process is not as easy as it might initially sound and requires multiple techniques to accomplish. A new user interface must be designed and implemented, though the back end processes may stay very similar. The second is to develop an entirely new mobile application for use with the mobile marketing campaign or advertising effort. A new mobile application will be required for each new platform that the application will be deployed on, such as the iPhone, Android, or Blackberry. The developer must be skilled in several programming languages, specifically Java, HTML, Flash, and the C programming languages are the most effective and in demand when developing applications for mobile marketing campaigns on hand-held devices.

3. Social Media Manager

The Social Media Manager position can vary from organization to organization. In general, this is the person that will be managing the day-to-day operations of the mobile marketing campaign. While the strategist devises the overall plan and methods of conducting the campaign, the social media manager will be in charge of ensuring those instructions are followed through. Another aspect of the Social Media Manager in some organizations will be to manage the social aspects of the mobile web properties. Mobile campaigns are increasingly becoming two-way streets, with consumers sending information back to the company as well as the company sending advertisements and information to the consumer. In addition, mobile campaigns lend themselves to social interaction and this must be managed to make sure that the interactions stay in line with the vision and intent of the campaign and are not derailed.

4. Media Buyer

One of the main ways of conducting a mobile campaign is by purchasing advertising on an already existing mobile advertising network. Companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have developed their own advertising networks and this composes a considerable part of their income. Making keyword purchase decisions can be a critical choice when developing a mobile marketing campaign, as the keywords should be relevant and engaging to the consumer. In addition, the ads should be placed in the network with relevant content to the target audience to increase their engagement with the campaign. This responsibility lies with the media buyer.

The jobs will be on the cutting edge of emerging mobile marketing jobs and will become commonplace in organizations trying to develop or maintain a mobile presence. Statistics show that more people own mobile devices than credit cards. It is only a matter of time before all businesses large and small realize that they will need to develop a presence on the mobile web and start hiring for these positions. Right now the mobile marketing field is wide open with no one company claiming dominance. As the field becomes more developed then it will be more difficult to move into these positions as the requirements will be higher than ever. Now is the time to develop the ability and knowledge to compete in the emerging mobile marketing job market.

Your business can flourish by getting some information on mobile advertising. What better way to reach your customer than to use a device that over 85% of the US population uses: cell phones.

Check out http://www.trendsinmobilemarketing.com/mobile-advertising/ [http://www.trendsinmobilemarketing.com/mobile-advertising/] for the best online tips for everything related to mobile marketing. Mobile is an emerging media with new rules and ways to optimize for maximum exposure and ROI. With the right resources you can be ahead of the curve vs. your competition and oust them with the latest mobile marketing tactics.

Mobile Marketing Trends for the near future

It is easy to get caught up in thinking about trends in mobile marketing over the next year or two. With shifting technology and user patterns, making accurate predictions of even the near future is more of a guessing game than a practical exercise. However, there is value in trying to predict where the technology will end up and how people and companies will be using it in a mobile marketing context. Getting ahead of the competition, even if just a little, provides companies with a stronger position in the future. Taking a risk based on predictions and trends is a troubling proposition, but the benefits and potential payoffs are often too large to dismiss. Predicting the next trend in mobile marketing will offer an advantage to those who are able to seize the opportunities now and set themselves up on the leading edge of those trends. Here are a few mobile marketing trends for the next decade that will almost certainly come to pass. One of the biggest trends in mobile marketing over the next decade has already started. Mobile advertising has been around for sometime now and location specific advertisements are on the rise. But with the wave of smart phones and location-based social media applications, the ability to deliver ads specifically targeted to a mobile phone based on their location will only improve. The GPS systems in smart phones will allow marketers to know where a user is in relation to the ads that they have to serve.

Someone walking down a street with a Starbucks nearby could be sent ad advertisement for a caramel latte. Even better, they could be sent a coupon for the drink as an enticement to go buy the latte. Users connecting with social media applications such as FourSquare are also on the rise. By checking in at specific locations, users are providing valuable information to where they are, but also where they have been and go often. By utilizing this information, mobile ads can be targeted to people who have checked in at everything from the local ice cream shop to a Wal-Mart store. Integrated location specific advertising services are in their nascent stages now but in the next decade they are set to explode in a big way. In the next decade, mobile devices will not just be a method of communicating and gathering information, they will be the way many people pay for goods and services. Right now there is a small market for people to pay with their mobile device. However, in the next decade that will change dramatically. Mobile devices will become the way many people pay for purchases. Instead of carrying around a wallet with many credit cards and debit cards and cash, all the payment information can be contained in the mobile device and transmitted to the merchant for payment. This will revolutionize the way purchases are made and will solidify the mobile device as the single most important item to carry. While banks will always have their own mobile apps to check balances and accounts, either they or a third party will have to create and expand the current mobile payment system to be more secure and ubiquitous enough for this type of payment option to take root. It will happen eventually, it’s just a matter of time and investment to get the system in place.

Trends In Mobile Marketing Will Continue To Grow

Political campaigns have already started to use mobile marketing. The campaign of then Senator Obama capitalized on the near universal cell phone usage of younger Americans to create mobile applications and text message systems to communicate with potential voters and supporters. This trend in capitalizing on mobile marketing by politicians will only continue as people increase their use of smart phones and their devices become a primary method of communication and information gathering. Grassroot organizing will no longer be done in meetings and offices, but will be done through the social web. This includes mobile devices as a means of political advertisement. Providing a platform for political communications and advertisements will be an increasing trend for mobile marketing in the next decade. The biggest emerging market for mobile marketing is Asia. Getting the best mobile marketing information is crucial to success. A company that sets its sights on penetrating the market there will be able to reap great rewards in the coming decade. Cell phone ownership has sky-rocketed and with over one billion people in China alone, the opportunity for mobile marketing is enormous. One recent campaign for Unilever’s Axe yielded 680 million incoming calls. Being able to harness the sheer numbers of mobile users in the Asian market will be a key to who the major players are in the mobile marketing world in the next decade. Getting a foothold in the market now will provide the ability to ride the rising tide of the Asian market that will inevitably arise in the next decade. Predicting the future can obviously a very difficult thing to do. History is littered with predictions of the future that never came to pass. However, the trends that are listed here have already started. Though many of them are small now, there is a great deal of room for them to expand in the coming decade. There is no reason these trends will not continue to develop and attract a greater user base. These mobile marketing trends will continue to offer opportunities in the coming decade.

What Trends In Mobile Marketing Do You See Coming Over The Next Year?

There are plenty of ideas to start your mobile marketing campaign. You just need the willpower to start advertising to your customers through this outlet.

Check out [http://www.trendsinmobilemarketing.com/mobile-marketing-agency/] for best practices on mobile advertising. Mobile is not new, but it is in its infancy. With more users than the world wide web if you are not optimizing and advertising via mobile then you are losing out on a huge potential customer base.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5667235

Small Business marketing on the mobile web

The world we live in gets easily bored and craves novelty. Smart marketers look for new ways to put a twist on old standby marketing and advertising techniques. Marketing through television and radio channels has been done to death and has more nuisance value than anything else as far as the audience is concerned.

For marketers seeking new ways and means to expand their reach anywhere their prospects are — the future is here. Smart marketers and advertisers create a personal touch in their ad campaigns. This is one of the reasons why mobile advertising is rapidly increasing in popularity as an effective marketing tool. And the astonishing use of mobile devices leveraged this trend.

There are over 1.5 billion mobile phone users worldwide according to the International Telecommunications Union with the highest growth percentage coming from emerging economies like China, Russia and India. The US has about 200 million mobile subscribers. Smart marketers are tapping into the potential to reach their prospects as they’re on the move. Mobile devices are practically a permanent attachment for people under age 34.

Mobile Advertising is delivered in a number of formats. Text messaging, mobile internet advertising and mobile radio advertising are some of the common advertising formats. Out of these, text messaging (SMS) is the most widely used format.

According to the joint Mobile Advertising Report (MAR) released by Limbo and GfK Technology, text message usage is about 74% in India, 48% in the UK and 22% in the US. Projections predict in the near future mobile internet advertising will surpass text message advertising (FierceWireless).

In June 2008, Nokia launched the Nokia Advertising Alliance that aims to make mobile advertising easier for advertisers. This particular program includes services like providing marketing strategies, geographic targeting and related technologies to enhance customer captivation. Now advertisers can work in conjunction with Nokia to expand the coverage of mobile advertising with emerging mobile technologies for more powerful ad promotions.

The best part about mobile marketing is mobile devices are more heavily used than traditional PCs. Mobile advertisements are delivered to the customer no matter where they are. Even with these advantages, mobile advertising is still in its “early adopter” stages with a long way to go. The main obstacles are in the form of data tariff structures, handset and mobile internet interactivity and quality of subject matter.

Like the early days of the Internet, there are more advertisers than quality content. Add to that an acute lack of tools to assess the performance of mobile ad campaigns. Even though most of these difficulties will be solved in the future, mobile advertising will still face competition from other advertising and marketing methods. Google, Microsoft and Nokia are the prominent players in mobile advertising. The future holds a huge potential in terms of revenues from mobile marketing spend..

According to a report released by Informa Telecoms & Media, it is estimated that marketing on mobile will generate USD 1.72 billion in 2008 and will rise to USD 12 billion in 2013. The report also advocates the use of banner ads as an effective tool in mobile advertising. The report highlights the significance of focusing on the long run and not the short term stumbling blocks.

Yahoo jumped on the bandwagon in June 2008 when it partnered with Publicis to integrate Publicis mobile advertising agency (PhoneValley) with Yahoo’s mobile developer platform language (Blueprint). The partnership is aimed at developing brands, reaching customers and maximizing sales through new techniques. It also aims to initiate cutting edge advertising strategies in the future.

Since the potential market for mobile advertising is huge, a few companies are exploring new horizons and expanding in new territory. For example, Millenial Media Inc., is venturing into Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Millenial develops ads for cell-phones and mobiles. Its CEO Paul Palmieri says “There is a tremendous growth opportunity for advertising on mobile on a global basis, as evidenced by a rich and active mobile direct marketing industry, as well as surging demand from top brand advertisers.”

The media industry and brand advertisers are slowly catching on and making use of mobile advertising to increase market penetration. Mobile advertising has added support from applications like ringtones and pictures. Bluetooth advertising is also growing in popularity. Here, a company can advertise its products or services over a fixed area.

The three major search engines: Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have already realized the potential and the possibilities of the mobile advertising market. MSN uses banner ads on MSN mobile pages. Earlier MSN’s mobile advertising was confined to countries like France, Japan, Spain and UK. Recently it expanded coverage to include the US. Google also launched mobile image ads. When the cell phone browser is opened these image ads are displayed on the screen. However, the ad size is much smaller as compared to those for web pages. These image ads are connected to a web page and they follow the price-per-click model Google AdWords uses.

Advertising on mobile is one of best forms of mass medium advertising. It’s personal, and has a wider reach than any other form of advertising. It’s still early to comment on exactly how big or how successful it will prove to be. However, by all indicators “the future’s so bright you gotta wear shades.”

The predictions about the future revenues generated through mobile advertising optimistic. A brand advertiser, a mobile advertising company and the consumer will have different perceptions of mobile marketing. However, advertising on mobile also comes with its fair share of drawbacks. Mobile ads are sometimes viewed as another form of spam and the advertisers as spammers. To resolve this issue, there are programs developed to give subscribers free talk-time for performing certain activities related to viewing ads. As far as the opinions of consumers are concerned, it’s a mixed bag. This is because people are simply not accustomed to being paid to view ads. Even if they are paid to view them, many still view the ads as a nuisance. It doesn’t make sense for the advertiser to pay a consumer to view ads if there are no conversions.

The debate continues. In the end the mighty dollar will decide. Most everyone agrees mobile advertising is here to stay.

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Some Practical Mobile Marketing Tips

In this article, we are going to describe powerful mobile marketing methods you can implement in just a few minutes. We will investigate what the industry and the technology allow us to do today, how to persuade people to sign up for your service and which file formats to use when you deliver your content. We will also take a sneak peek on what will happen with mobile marketing in the near future.

The hands-on experience is based on solving marketing problems with the help of InfoNU (www.infonu.com). InfoNU is a free web based mobile mass communication platform that supports the latest trends in mobile marketing. With InfoNU you can:

• Send SMS messages such as personalized alerts and mobile coupons
• Push mobile content like banners, mp3-songs, ringtones, video clips, visiting cards and java games
• Push links to mobile websites
• Create and schedule mobile campaigns
• Sign up and manage consumers
• Get your own icon next to the address book and calendar to publish mobile content without cost
• View statistics on how mobile marketing efforts are received by users

As in all sectors in explosive growth, bright people gravitate towards mobile marketing, create start-up companies, offer solutions and unfortunately also create a big creative mess full of definitions, standards, ideas and solutions. This article series is the authors attempt to untangle the web of technologies into easy-to-use patters you can use in your everyday marketing of your brand, company, products and services.

A second part of this article is planned. In Part 2 we will take a closer look at advanced concepts in mobile marketing like tailor-made mobile applications and mobile community services.

Permission Marketing and What Mobile Marketing is NOT

A mobile phone is a highly personal communication device. Mobile marketing is not about spamming uninterested people with irrelevant SMS messages at 2:00 am. Marketers have to respect this. Never send messages to someone without having their permission. Sending unsolicited SMS messages to people is not good marketing. Aside from the ethical aspect of spam, it does not work and costs you a lot of money. Do not do it.

Marketing activities that depends on the permission of the consumer is referred to as permission marketing and is central to mobile marketing. Embrace permission marketing and protect your list of consumers, it is the people who have given you permission to speak.

The Mobile Marketing Dance

Instead of sending unsolicited SMS messages, the trick in mobile marketing is to persuade people to sign up for your service and then to find a balance between providing sales driving information and offering value so that your customers are both informed and happy.

How to Persuade People to Sign Up for Your Service
What can you offer that makes your consumers accept the commercial side of your company? Here are a few suggestions:

In other words: Send something back as a Thank you for signing up. Give your new user something for free. Give your new user a possibility to win something nice. At least a thank you SMS.

To configure InfoNU so that you automatically send something back when new consumers sign up to your service, log on to your InfoNU account, select Settings in the Intranet Home menu followed by SMS Signup settings, click on Details for your code word and enable Respond automatically with an SMS message. You can send back an SMS message, mobile content like images, video and music, a link to your mobile web site or a Java application.

To integrate your own web site with InfoNU as in the fifth example above, select Help in the Intranet Home menu followed by Integrate InfoNU and click on Generate Link.

File Formats to Use when Distributing Mobile Content

Since virtually all mobile phones support SMS messaging, sending SMS messages is the simplest and most reliable way to come across to mobiles. SMS messages are as we all know limited to 160 characters but can contain links to mobile content.

All mobile phones does not support the same media formats. If you have no a-priori knowledge about your consumers phones but still want to reach the biggest possible audience, use to the following file formats:

Media, File Format,File Extension

Images, Portable network graphics, .png

Sound, MP3 songs, .mp3

Video, 3GPP video 3gp

Ringtones Midi music .mid

This list of file formats comes from analyzing mobile phones produced by the biggest manufacturers and ranking the phones after how common each phone is in practice.

Three other interesting file formats can be used for more specialized tasks:

Media, File Format, File Extension

Visiting cards and address book entries, vCard, .vcf

Calendar entries, vCard, .vcs

Java games, Java application descriptor files, .jad

Distributing links to mobile content with InfoNU is performed in the exact same way regardless of file format: You log on to your InfoNU account, select Uploads and upload the content from your PC to your InfoNU account. To distribute the content to a single person, click that person’s Communicate link. Make sure that Upload is selected as Type of Content.

If you want to send an SMS message to many people, create a campaign by clicking on Campaigns in the Intranet Home menu followed by New campaign. With InfoNU, you can also schedule campaigns to be run at a specific date and time. Go to Campaigns and click on Schedule campaign to define the start date of your campaign.

A Catalogue of Mobile Marketing Patterns

After your user signed up for your service, his/hers mobile phone transforms into an excellent communication channel. This section lists proven marketing methods for you to reuse:

Task: Inform customers about new products and updates, new offers and relevant company news.

Solution: Send an SMS message at an appropriate time with the information.

Note: To know when to send your message, ask yourself the following two questions: When is this information relevant to my mobile user? When will the message have the biggest impact? If you are selling umbrellas, sending your message when your customer is outside your store on his way home and it is raining outside might be a good idea. When is it not a good idea to send a message? At night? In the morning?

InfoNU supports sending personalized SMS messages. By using the tags {FirstName}, {LastName}, and {Mobile} in your SMS text, you can personalize the message with the recipients name and mobile phone number.

Task: Promote your rock groups new album.

Solution: Promote the following message: Text THECHAINSAWS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new song. Follow up by sending an SMS message to everyone who signed up when your new album is released.

Note: Distributing video to mobile phones is possible today but do not expect top quality and do not expect to send out more than 10 seconds. Advances in mobile streaming technologies will make longer video transmissions possible in a few years.

To distribute a song to mobile phones convert it to an .mp3-file, log on to your InfoNU account, select Uploads and upload your song from your PC to your InfoNU account. You can distribute the song either to an individual person or create a campaign to send content to large groups of fans.

Task: You have a nice jingle that you would like to be recognized in the metro.

Solution: Produce a ringtone and send it to your consumers for free.

Task: Increase sales by distributing a mobile coupon to your customers.

Solution: Send out the following SMS message to your consumers: Here is your coupon for the movie. Show this message and get two tickets for the price of one. A43-K32-F83.

To create SMS coupons with InfoNU, use the {Coupon} tag in your SMS text. InfoNU will automatically create the coupon text for you. To view coupons and its owners, select Mobile Users and click on Mobile coupons.

Task: Get new customers by using viral marketing.

Solution: Create an SMS campaign with the following text: Welcome to Marty’s Bar. This is your VIP pass. Show this message and get a free beer. Feel free to send this message to your friends.

Task: You want to create an SMS newsletter that is delivered once a day.

Solution: Create several days of SMS campaigns with your content. Schedule the campaigns so that one is run every week.

To schedule a campaign to be run at a specific day, log on to your InfoNU account, select Campaigns in the Intranet Home menu and click on Campaign schedule.

Task: You are having an event together with all your employees and customers.

Solution: Send out an invitation as an SMS message one week before the event. Send an SMS message the day before to remind everybody. Schedule SMS messages to be sent during the event to sychronize people. Send out an event the day after the event to say thank you and to follow up.

But…We have Invested in a WAP Site?

If your company has a mobile web site or a WAP site, use SMS messaging to simplify access to your site. Send an SMS message with a link to your site. To visit your site, your consumer simply opens the SMS message and does not have to enter your URL address on the mobile phone:

Task: Promote your mobile web site and make it easier to access.

Solution: Add the following text to your web site: Mobile Access At All Times. Get our news on your mobile. Text REUTERS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost). Send back an SMS message that contains a link to your mobile web site. Your consumers can access your site by opening your SMS message instead of entering the URL address on the handset.

To distribute a link to your mobile web or WAP page, create a text file that contains the URL to your site (i.e the text http://wap.sl.se), save the file with a .lnk file extension and upload the .lnk-file to your InfoNU account. To automatically send back the link, select Configure Settings, SMS Signup settings so that people receive your .lnk file as a response when they sign up to your service.

The Future of Mobile Marketing

Handset manufacturers are now working hard to unify the user experience on mobile phones. This will make Java applications and mobile web pages look and feel the same way regardless of handset manufacturer.

Manufacturers are also implementing a video compression standard called h.264. This compression technique is twice as efficient as the one used today. If you ever have tried video calls and been disappointed, expect to experience higher image quality within a year or two. The h.264 compression technique will be used for video calls, mobile-TV (in the standard called DVB-H) and for video streaming. The telecommunication industry believes that h.264 will make video calls and mobile video streaming useful in practice.

In Part II of this article series, we will take a closer look at mobile applications and how marketers can design mobile chat, newsletters and community services in just a few minutes.

Anders Hansson is with IntelliTech Software AB, a mobile software development firm. The company is delivering consulting services for customers like Ericsson, Symbian, Sony-Ericsson and several European mobile operators. The company also develops the open mobile marketing platform InfoNU. For more information about IntelliTech, visit

[http://www.intellitech.se]