WhoWhen you build a solid mobile audience, you lay the foundation for a successful future with mobile marketing, but where do you start?   A mobile audience is inherently different, both in how they receive your message and how they respond.  As a marketer, you must leverage the unique attributes mobile presents to your brand and use them to your advantage.

Since mobile marketing is a highly permission-based marketing channel, your audience begins and ends with your database.  Many times, however, this doesn\’t mean starting from scratch.  You\’ve likely already built an audience using other marketing vehicles and converting that audience to mobile begins with strategically-placed calls-to-action in your traditional marketing collateral.

For example, place text-in calls-to-action in the emails you are sending to your lists, or include a mobile sign-up on your website, blog and other online properties.  Develop special promotions, giveaways, polls, sweepstakes or other similar campaigns to promote via your traditional channels.  The end goal should be to provide some sort of value to the audience you already haveso that they will sign up and give you their permission to message them on their mobile devices in the future.  Doing this properly and consistently will quickly build your mobile database and subsequent mobile audience.

The demographics of a mobile audience  is inherently different from other channels as well.  Those who actively interact with mobile content, applications and other mobile media are, for the most part, younger consumers who are much more apt to engage with your brand via mobile than older consumers, and this must be taken into consideration.  This is rapidly changing, however, as our population becomes more and more accustomed to interacting with advanced mobile devices.

Likewise, various forms of mobile marketing have different impacts on different demographics.  If you\’re targeting an older audience, for example, SMS is likely the preferred medium given its ubiquitous nature and ease-of-use.  A younger audience is more apt to engage with new-age mobile media such as mobile apps, mobile gaming, and social media.

Once you\’ve built your mobile audience and understand which forms of mobile media work best for various demographics, it\’s important to maintain engagement through your mobile messaging.  Consistency is key. Be sure you send messages with an appropriate frequency in order to keep your brand fresh on the minds of your recipients.  To maintain engagement, the content you distribute can\’t become stale and must always provide value of some kind.

Constantly building, optimizing and leveraging your mobile audience is one of the most important aspects to a well-rounded marketing strategy.  Simply having a mobile audience isn\’t enough, however. Make sure that you understand your audience, its demographics and how to best leverage it to your advantage through engagement with the various types of mobile media and messaging available to you.  This is the key to mobile marketing success.