With mobile being the newest kid on the block it may seem prudent to let it wait. Just stick with the tried and true methods. Keep it safe. My take on it is that it is the perfect time to jump in with mobile marketing. It is actually the perfect marketing tool for tough economic times because there is no better time to use a tool that is a direct response mechanism that is timely and relevant to consumers. The results you get from mobile marketing are trackable and can make your other marketing trackable. Plus you can beat your competition to the punch with mobile.

Six Reasons Mobile Marketing is the Perfect Tool for Tough Economic Times:

1.
It is a Direct Response Tool

Mobile marketing is a direct response tool – people can quickly and easily respond to your marketing by using their mobile device. This is perfect for tough economic times because if you set up your marketing campaign to be direct response you can measure what is working. And when you build your campaign around the response being a revenue-generating activity then you will be actively bringing in business that you know came from a specific campaign.

2.
Done Correctly, It is Relevant to Consumers

When you offer something of value to consumers and provide it to them when they need it wherever they happen to be, you are the hero. In rough times consumers are looking for ways to save money and they always want to save time and be smart. Give them these things via mobile and you both win.

3.
Nothing is More Timely

There is no faster way to reach consumers than through mobile. If they are looking for you on their mobile browser having a mobile-friendly website makes that possible. If you have enticed them to be on your mobile alert list you can contact them when even email is too slow.

4.
Mobile Marketing is Trackable

Not only can you track your mobile marketing efforts, you can use mobile marketing to track results of you other marketing efforts. By adding a mobile response option (call in on your mobile now, text in to win or even browse to a certain mobile-friendly URL) you can see which of your marketing is getting a response. If you find that a particular marketing effort is simply not paying off you can stop doing it and thereby save money on ineffective marketing.

5.
It Helps Your Other Marketing Be More Effective

Adding in a response mechanism to your advertising and marketing adds a level of excitement and interaction to your other marketing that is unusual. Instead of just staying with the tried and true which may have become boring to your customers, you can bring mobile to the table and step things up.

6.
Your Competition is Not Using it Yet

Because mobile marketing is the newest marketing tool in the toolbox not very many businesses are using it yet. You have the chance to jump in first and reap the biggest rewards. Mobile is as new and exciting to consumers as the internet once was. The opportunity is ripe to be one of the first businesses to get going. Just do it. Really.

Just think how powerful it is to have your Twitter messages being delivered instantly to the mobile devices of your followers, not just waiting in the Twitterstream to possibly be noticed. You now know with almost certainty that your messages are being read.

When using Twitter as a mobile marketing tool you need to change your posting strategy just a bit knowing that each time you send a message everyone on the receiving end of the message is looking at their cell phone. No posting about what you ate for breakfast. Instead you need to keep your posts to only important items and ones that truly add value to your followers’ lives. It certainly can be done.

Without a doubt Twitter can be an excellent mobile marketing tool.

The only downfall of this strategy is that if anything ever happened to Twitter (beyond the fail whale) you would lose your list of followers. After all, without Twitter as a platform, you have no way to reach this group of people ever again.

So, if you like the idea of having a group of people you can send SMS messages to on a regular basis I suggest that you start your own text message list. In essence you would be creating your own Twitter stream direct to your groups’ cell phones. I suggest starting right away before everyone else is doing it.

To find out how to do this, you can sign up for my How to Build a Text Message List teleseminar here.

Everything that Ross covered in his post is solid advice. Since I was right in the middle of launching a mobile site this week (details here) I was especially glad to see his post. Here are some more tips from the trenches I’d like to share that compliment what he already covered.

Affordable Mobile Site Builder





The site builder I chose to use is MoFuse. It is an online mobile site builder that has a lot of flexibility in what can be done with it. It can mobilize an existing site or build a complete new one. Pages can be crated from scratch or can be RSS fed pages. (I used a combination of both.) I found the site building process to be more intuitive and flexible than other site builders. It is extremely easy to drag and drop pages to rearrange the order of pages.

With MoFuse I am using my own domain but didn’t have to host it myself. There is a free option and a paid version (currently $3 per month). With the paid version I got access to build as many sites as I want and can monetize the site with AdMob or Google Adsense and keep 100% of the ad revenue.

There is a built in site analysis that monitors traffic right from within the dashboard and I’ve found that MoFuse has excellent support and is very responsive to customer needs.

It would be well worth your time to give MoFuse a look if you are looking for an affordable mobile site builder.

Get Traffic to Your Mobile Site with Mobile Directories and Search Engines

In addition to the mobile directories that are covered in Ross’s post, you should also work to get your mobile site listed here:

PhoneFavs
Chaos 365
JamPaw.com
Medio
PDAHomePage
WAP Review

Before you start clicking to submit, have your site description written and a list of keywords ready. You’ll need them for a lot of these sites.

Then keep a list of which sites you have submitted to so you can check back to see if you’re listed. That way you will also avoid double submitting.

My take on the mobile web is that it MUST survive. Not because any of us in the mobile industry need it to, but because the ultimate customers (the everyday guys and gals on the street using their phones to access the Internet) do.

While I do absolutely love the iPhone commercials and think the marketing team behind them is brilliant I also think they are confusing a lot of folks. They make it seem like people want to browse the Internet on mobile in the exact same way they do when they have a life-size (not pocket size) computer. I just don’t think that is true.

Think about it for a second, the reason a person goes online with their mobile is to find something or do something specific because they ARE mobile. If they had access to a full sized computer monitor and a keyboard their fingers actually fit on, they would use it. Maybe they do have access to a full sized computer, but think that jumping online on their phone will be quicker. This means they are looking for something specific, not leisurely browsing or researching. Consumers need to find that something and be able to consume it easily.

Make no mistake about it, I’m not saying the mobile web is WAP, far from it. The mobile web at its best is sites like m.redbook.com, m.tvguide.com, mobile.allrecipes.com and tarotreading.mobi. These sites are designed specifically for consumers to use them while they are mobile. The best features of their sites that people want are there, ready to be consumed easily via mobile. Ta Dah – this is the mobile web.

As Giff Gfroerer, i2SMS commented amid all this discussion:

Simply put, one can not put their entire Internet site onto what people see when they pull up their site from a mobile web browser. Figure out what content your consumers will need from their mobile device and make that front and center.

Yes, that’s it. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

It will be even better when consumers don’t need to choose a specific mobile URL but will automatically be directed to the proper content for how they are consuming it. And if they want the full site on their mobile to be able to choose that too. That is the future of the mobile web as I see it.

It is our job as mobile industry professionals, marketers and businesses to help consumers get what they want and need as quickly as possible whether they are using an iPhone, smartphone or flip phone. It really isn’t about what phone anyone is using, it is about the experience they have. If we want that experience to be good then the mobile web must survive.