Instead of asking \”why\” mobile marketing, the question now should be \”why not\” mobile marketing. As the mobile ecosystem continues to evolve, so too does a marketing channel that surpasses all others in terms of personal connection with consumers, unrivaled targeting and relevancy capabilities and a means to speak to your audience on the one device that\’s with a person at all times, whether at home, work or anywhere else.
The personal nature of the mobile channel provides several behavioral advantages from a marketer\’s standpoint, with users responding and interacting with various forms in different ways. Let\’s take a look at why various forms of mobile messaging are used and the behavioral reasons for doing so.
When speaking of mobile messaging, SMS is by far the most prolific. The far reaching attributes of SMS and the fact that nearly all cell phones are capable of receiving them provides a unique means to reach an audience, but why is that? SMS provides a real-time response mechanism for mobile campaigns of all shapes and sizes and produces an open-rate near 100%. In addition, SMS marketing provides an easily measurable medium that can encourage a wide variety of real-time calls-to-action, which is an attribute that\’s simply not possible through any other channel.
Through the use of SMS, a marketer can induce two-way communication with an audience and encourage a variety of immediate responses based on the underlying goals of any campaign. In addition, you can easily manipulate how a user responds to an SMS message and leverage the close interactive nature to your advantage.
Another good example of using mobile messaging for a behavioral advantage is through the use of location. Mobile is the only channel that can take into account a user\’s location at any given time, and leverage that real-time data to encourage location-specific calls-to-action. Using a strategically-placed LBS campaign, a marketer can drive foot traffic into a local business, for example, or place a local brand in front of people within close proximity of the business to allow the brand to stand out from the rest. The behavioral aspect being leveraged in this example is both the real-time attribute of mobile messaging and the immediacy of encouraging users to visit a specific location at that very moment.
Mobile marketing in general provides a unique opportunity to leverage user behavior like never before, and therefore substantially increase the chances of success. How people interact with their mobile devices is far different than how they interact with television, radio, print or any other medium. The personal connection that mobile communication enables allows for a level of engagement that\’s limited only by the imagination of the marketer. Adequately identifying how your audience engages with your brand from a behavioral standpoint is of the utmost importance and knowing how and when to leverage that behavior is what will set you apart from your competition.