Five Key Hurdles Facing Mobile Marketers

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Mobile offers you the opportunity for real time engagement. With smart phones becoming smarter - mobile merges email, & phone. Additionally, it gives the consumer instant access to social media channels. This means that a business can connect in real time.

Here are five issues to consider.

Consumer Acceptance - Mobile has the ability to target people one on one, yet there still exists the 'horde' marketing mentality. 'Horde' translates to as many offers to as many people most of the time. Instead the focus should be on extreme personalization (which might be hit or miss and you can learn from it) driven through preferences.

Emerging & Transitioning Technologies - Old mobile was designed for the flip phone. New mobile is being designed for the smart phone. The phone is becoming 'smarter' and consumers are just getting to what is available. Applications being built for both environments – the old flip & the smarter phone; and in some cases being delivered without any real testing. Keep in mind that testing here needs to be done to ensure that they work correctly and are mobile friendly. You will get fewer second chances to make first impressions with mobile applications.

Cost of Usage & Bandwidth - While incoming is free in many parts of the world - many US providers make a lot of money on incoming messages. Hefty fees on the transfer of data coupled with real network bandwidth challenges (my 'smart phone' goes blank for long periods of time in New York City) are going to be the gauge on driving user engagement. The cost will have to come down, bandwidth will have to increase, and the applications will have to be more efficient to keep users engaged.

Regulation & Laws – Do you know about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act? Before capturing user preferences businesses need to make sure that the consumer has opted-in to receive mobile messaging. There are a number of companies that are offering to get the consumer opted-in to your marketing messages via SMS, yet their methodology opens up a can of ethical worms.

SPAM – You have to be wary as this is the easiest way to increase regulation, choke bandwidth, increase costs, flood the consumers in-box, consequently reducing consumer acceptance. A few large companies with top notch programs are ‘unaware’ that their ‘local brick & mortar places’ have their own mobile messaging initiatives!

Mobile can do a lot for the marketer.