Mobile Marketing For Small Businesses - Part 2

Welcome back for another exciting adventure in the world of mobile marketing! If you are just joining us and missed the first post in this series, I recommend reading it first. It will give you a baseline level of understanding of what the various types of mobile devices are:

Part 1 - What are the different categories of mobile devices like feature phones, smartphones, etc...

Today, I want to take these same categories and look at how they compare from a marketer's perspective. Let's jump right in!

Marketing to Dumb Phone Users

Can you say Cold Call? Yeah, there's not many options for a marketer when it comes to dumb phones. You can call them and hope they put you in their contacts, but that's about it... For these mobile prospects, you may as well have their home phone number.

Marketing to Feature Phone Users

When we step up to the feature phone group, there are many more options for marketing. As a quick refresher from my last post, here's a list of features that most feature phones have that would be applicable for marketing:

• Have All of the dumb phone features plus...
• Text messaging
• Have Cameras
• Run pre-installed apps and some Network supplied apps
• Have basic web browsers with VERY limited capaibilities
• Some have internet access
• Some have email clients
• Some have social media apps
• Scan 2D Barcodes

Based on this list of features you can see that there are several opportunities here. I will now take this same list and add sub-items with some options for marketing. Please keep in mind that this by no means exhaustive!

• Text messaging
  • Direct txt messages to customers/prospects
  • Send product/service updates
  • Send order statuses with marketing messages included
  • Have contests or polls where prospects/clients/customers txt a value to a short code
• Have Cameras
  • Take a picture of something and send it with MMS to a shortcode to be entered into contest
  • Take picture of yourself or someone else with a product to enter a contest
  • Encourage product/service picture sharing on social networks
  • Encourage home video with home camera to be shared
• Have basic web browsers with VERY limited capabilities
  • Simple, mobile optimized websites
  • Enter contest online through mobile site
  • Anything website-related
• Some have email clients
  • All standard email marketing options, but the email clients on these phones often only show text, so nice html emails may not work here
• Some have social media apps
  • When coupled with options under the camera list, many sharing options open up
  • Location based social media options for event or storefront checkins and sharing with friends on social media sites
  • Contests, direct status updates to fans/likers
  • Direct messages through social to followers
• Scan 2D Barcodes
  • Post 2D Barcodes with products and on signage to encourage scanning
  • Share contents of barcodes on social sites
  • Direct users to your mobile website for a longer engagement with the prospect
  • Contests, etc...

Again, I want to re-iterate that these are 1/100 of what you can do to market to users with feature phones. There are many more options, especially when coupled with other marketing channels.

Marketing to Smartphone Users

The smartphone user group is full options. While it does overlap greatly with the Feature Phone segment, smartphones enhance many of the options on a feature phone. For instance, the email client on a smartphone is able to view HTML email messages with images and design elements. Here's a list of some more options:

• A full-color, higher resolution screen - Larger in size, ranging from 3-4.5 inches
  • More sophisticated mobile websites that are wider
    • Web browsers are MUCH more powerful including flash on some platforms
    • Mobile sites can be as functional as an app installed right on the phone
  • Videos!!!!
• A fast processor and Dedicated memory for running apps plus Onboard and often removable storage for apps and media
  • You can develop apps specifically for your business or products/services
  • You can allow for downloads from your mobile site like whitepapers or order forms
  • Higher sophistication in mobile sites is possible
  • With all of the apps available to smartphone users you can buy Adwords-type ads to be displayed in the apps
• Full QWERTY keyboards in software or hardware
  • Easier to have txt heavy or email heavy contests
  • Contests that require fields to be filled in
• Touch screens, touch pads (for scrolling & moving the mouse) or track ball(same)
  • Games
  • Contests that require fields to be filled in

I realize that I am beating a dead horse here, but this list barely scratches the surface of what the marketing options are for smartphone users.

Marketing to Tablet Users

Whether you're looking at targeting iPads, the new Motorola Xoom tablet that will be launching soon, or all of the above, many of the same options as smartphones apply here as well. Clearly the screens are much larger, allowing for a full website experience.

When targeting iPad users it's important to remember that they do not support flash. A targeted mobile site developed in HTML5 is a much better option than just letting your full desktop site be the solution for tablets. Another consideration is that users will not be using a mouse. They will be using their fingers.

The same in-app ad opportunities are available here like they are for smartphones. Social media apps and involvement are available as well as email, video, location-based marketing and in some cases 2D barcodes.

Much More To Explore With Mobile Marketing

I'm still in the very introductory stages of this series so please keep an eye out for my upcoming posts in this series. In the next post I will look at some current data on feature phone versus smartphone users. If you plan on targeting one or the other, you had better be armed with the data to justify it!

As always, I welcome your comments and would be happy to answer any questions you have!