The Clean and Green Club

Three times as many people carry a cell phone or PDA than use stand-alone computers. And the opportunity for marketers, particularly for those willing to be pioneers while the field is wide open, is huge. Mobile marketing is in its earliest stage, where the Internet was around 1996. If you have an appropriate offering and strategy now, you might just ride the next boom. Just in the US, sales of hard goods (not including downloadable purchases) via mobile is expected to go from $480 million in 2006 to $1.9 billion in 2010 (that’s a nearly 400 percent increase in four years). And some experts expect mobile to become the most popular way to pay for a transaction within the next few years.

But you need a roadmap in this universe, where a wrong turn could leave you bleeding and broke. I recommend The Mobile Marketing Handbook: Step-by-Step Guide to Crating Dynamic Mobile Marketing Campaigns, by Kim Dushinski–from which all these tips came. (and there are a lot more I don’t have room for. If you’re going to market to mobile users, read the book.)

Remember that mobile marketing cannot be intrusive and succeed. It must be welcomed, so use pull rather than push strategies. In other words, your prospect must be a willing and eager participant in your marketing, and that means your mobile marketing has to offer actual value. Here are six possible ways to do that:

Tap into location-specific needs when they are physically nearby

Offer timely and time-sensitive information (example: we had a cancellation, so now you can get that earlier appointment you wanted)

Make life easier for them (examples: click to call or launch a web page)

Provide financial incentive

Entertain

Let people connect with each other

Mobile marketing can also add enormous value when you integrate it into your existing marketing. As an example, by adding a mobile-based response system such as a shortcode or photo-loading web page, even a billboard can go from a mere branding exercise to a powerful, trackable direct-response marketing system. Dushinski identifies six different ways to incorporate direct response into a mobile campaign.

Next month: legal, ethical, and strategic considerations in mobile marketing