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Why Integrating Mobile is Imperative NowIn a web-made world, consumers demand brands that are always open and always available. Integrating mobile communications into your marketing mix gives customers a brand they can connect with anytime, anyplace. By fully embracing mobile, your brand can drive a constant dialogue and create effective cross-channel program management, delivering new customer connection opportunities and extending existing relationships. So why aren’t more brands doing it?

Countless companies want to dive into mobile marketing but are hesitant because they don’t yet understand its complexities or potential investment returns. Instead, they dip their feet into the mobile waters—usually when only a few dollars remain in the budget—creating tiny communication ripples and satisfying only their speculative need to ‘do mobile’. But what about the customer?

Brands that adopt technology based on novelty or price instead of its ability to deliver value-added services, end up with isolated, ineffective mobile initiatives. Customers end up disappointed. These ‘one-off’ projects not only fall short of customer expectations, they send mixed marketing messages, fail to connect with

users, and make it difficult to measure success.

Successful companies avoid these pitfalls and employ the valuable lessons they learned during

digital’s early days.

The web is not about replicating offline activities, but about enhancing consumer engagements. Similarly, when effectively merged with online and offline communications, targeted mobile plans offer the opportunity to nourish customer interactions, maintain brand synergy and improve ROI.

Integrated mobile communication offers a location-independent, immediately-interactive channel that engages customers on their own turf—no matter where that turf is located.

Mobile Powering Anytime, Anyplace Communications

LITMUS

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Used strategically as part of your complete marketing plan, mobile helps integrate all customer touchpoints, extending overall brand messaging, improving the ability to deliver on-demand content and elevating the entire experience. But how do you do it?

Driving a meaningful 1:1 dialogue and connecting deeply with customers demands a communications plan that embraces the use and recognizes the power of mobile messaging, marketing, experiences and commerce. From simple mobile messaging efforts with SMS text alerts to mobile commerce campaigns that enable customer reviews, strategic marketing initiatives have the power to engage with multi-functional mobile consumers, cultivating effective, realtime communications and transactions. Plus, consistently enabling conversations between customers and brands via the mobile medium improves the ability to measure and analyze the effectiveness of all consumer touchpoints.

Don’t Let the Newness and Complexity Scare YouIf anything, urgency should be on your mind. Mobile is already a viable, important player in the marketing mix—and its role continues to grow. Brands need to start now to engage with mobile consumers and then evolve those programs as the technology opportunities expand. Find the approach that will make the quickest, most powerful impact with your consumers.

1. Build a mobile web siteStart building the foundation of your mobile platform with small pieces of relevant information. Your mobile web site can start with the basics like store locations, specials, or nutritional information. Gradually expand with product information, ratings and reviews or inventory information.

While the audience for your mobile site today may look small, know that this group is deeply engaged in the medium. They are actively looking for you and your services there, and the cost of a simple mobile site is not a large one. Plus, the mobile audience will continue to grow.

ReadyU.comMobile site

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2. Advertise in the mobile spaceWhile the mobile ad industry is well-established, it’s not yet saturated; competition is small so your brand gets higher recall than through other online marketing efforts.

Remain true to the brand initiatives while driving traffic to the mobile web site.

3. Start textingDeploy an SMS initiative to measure audience reach and engagement. It can be used literally—to achieve a set number of opt-ins or messages sent, for example—but SMS should also be used to measure touch points in a holistic campaign. Place different keywords and short codes into your mobile programs.

SMS is a unique and personal tactic—younger consumers’ texting has taken the place of email for communicating with friends. Be relevant. Retailers, for example, might use mobile price alerting and couponing because they naturally complement current business practices. Start by targeting a region or a set of stores to test it out and make sure your messaging and approach are effective.

WalmartSecret in-store specials

Sherwin-WilliamsAd/coupon campaign

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In ConclusionBy applying the lessons and best practices learned from integrating digital with brick and mortar to mobile, you can: create opportunities for new relationships, strengthen connections with existing customers, gain powerful insight into the needs and desires of consumers, and fuel marketing in an unprecedented way. So don’t be afraid and don’t be stuck in a silo. You can—and should—get into mobile today.

Fueled by the RI:LABThe RI:Lab is the R&D arm of Resource Interactive. The Lab offers an innovation mindset to make the future relevant to the here and now for our clients and their teams. It isolates the trend swings and technological shifts that matter, and finds at their intersection new, bold opportunities for consumer engagement and competitive advantage, while providing consumer insights driven by research and experience.

About Resource InteractiveResource Interactive is one of the nation’s preeminent digital marketing agencies, helping Fortune 500 companies thrive in the evolving internet economy with award-winning digital strategy, creative and technology solutions. Known for its revolutionizing consumer insights, leading edge interactive design and technological innovation, Resource Interactive is ranked among the top ten independent interactive agencies in the nation.

Unique in the industry as female-founded, owned and operated, Resource Interactive has grown over its 28-year history from its first marketing relationship with Apple to ongoing partnerships with clients such as Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, The Coca-Cola Company, Victoria’s Secret, Sherwin-Williams and L.L. Bean, among others. For more information, visit www.resource.com.

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