It’s easy to get excited about mobile marketing. The UK’s 43 million handsets offer an immediate, always on route to consumers. However, people have a different relationship with their mobiles compared to that with their PC. A mobile is a much more personal device, and permission to contact them on it is tightly guarded.

Unless you think users are eager to receive floods of texts and banner ads clogging up their shrunken screens, smart thinking is needed on how you gain permission to deliver your messages.

Mobile marketing is still in its infancy, and has a lot of growing up to do before it reaches maturity. And that applies to marketing tactics as much as it does to the technology.

Mobiles are more personal, which is what mobile marketing needs to be

Since Mr Jobs reeled off the iPhone’s features to rapturous whoops, manufacturers have been rushing to build the ultimate multi-functional mobile device. More than just a phone with added bells, mobiles will be appearing that provide access to the same services as on a home PC.
Whether it’s paying bills, online shopping or finding a local restaurant, mobiles will soon be an integral tool for how people manage their lives. It’s when the next gen mobile becomes the essential lifestyle device that we’ll see them emerging from pockets other than than those of the business or tech savvy user.

A mobile phone will become the ultimate, personalised lifestyle device for accessing the things people care about. Consequently, people’s relationship with their mobile will be even more personal than they are already. Permission to use them as a marketing channel will therefore be even more tightly guarded.

Whilst the personal relationship a prospect has with their mobile poses a challenge, it also offers marketers an opportunity.

Mobile marketing should be about relationship building

We’re already living in an age where strategies need to be smarter than just to ’spray and pray’ messages. Consumers are taking control of the content they want to receive. If you’re not offering them value then you’ll soon find your path blocked. This is the mobile marketer’s challenge: to build trust with ad weary prospects.

However, mobile also presents an enormous opportunity. It has the potential to be the superior relationship building medium (barring meeting every prospect one-to-one). It’s a platform for coaxing trust and loyalty by being of value to the consumer. The quickest way to ruin these feelings is to bombard them with messages as soon as they switch on their mobile.

The future lies in a mobile CRM strategy: building loyalty and dialogue through engaging with relevant, targeted offers and desirable, downloadable content. A mobile is a personal device. And as such users will reward loyalty to those who treat it with respect.  

The success of mobile marketing is not just a case of waiting for better data plans, coverage and handsets. But also for the right marketing mindset to mature.

Mass delivery of irrelevant messages is the quickest way to lose trust

The personal and immediate nature of mobile offers enormous potential for relationship building with valuable content. And as with the relationship between print and digital, your mobile strategy should be integrated into your wider campaign, with calls to action to initiate mobile included in your brochures and website.

So whilst some advertisers prepare to pepper mobile users with banner ads and text messages, remember that the quickest way to lose trust is with undesired, irrelevant content.

Start thinking about customised messages, downloadable videos and GPS targeted offers. Because to be successful in mobile marketing you’ll want to be a user’s valued and trusted friend, rather than a temporary intruder.  

___________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.