The longer I live, the more I see patterns. They repeat themselves again and again. As the “ancient geek” on this illustrious faculty, I should know.

Take mobile marketing, for example…

Everyone’s totally buzzed (pardon the pun) about mobile marketing at the moment – and there are some pretty good reasons for being buzzed. People are more connected by their phones than ever before in history. You can reach mobile phones anytime, anywhere. And, people tend to pay serious attention to anything that arrives on their mobile phones.

This makes mobile an alluring market, indeed. I want to caution you to proceed carefully, however. This is a route that offers incredible promise…but it’s also fraught with pitfalls only someone with excellent hindsight might be aware of.

Just remember the fax machine.

This was a hot invention. It changed the way businesses communicated, especially before email became king. By the mid-80s, it was hard to find a business of any size without a fax machine. As prices dropped, more and more homes had them, too.

Today, it’s almost impossible to buy a computer printer without built-in fax capabilities. Even the cheapest models.

I loved fax machines. For the first time, I could send someone a written letter complete with graphics and visuals, and know it was in their hands the same day! It was a tool that was easy to love. Wow.

I can remember how excited I was when I ran across my first fax auto-responder. You could call a phone number, listen to a menu of questions you might need an answer to and, by pressing the right number and entering your fax number, receive the information you requested, immediately on your fax.

Pretty cool! As a publisher, I started seeing a lot of possibilities for the fax.

Soon, many companies offered fax-backs of frequently asked support questions, menus of various information documents you could request, whole newsletters and more. As soon as services started offering the ability to send mass faxes to entire lists of fax machines, the marketing began big-time. Soon, I was receiving all kinds of unwanted faxes…one or two per week. Then one or two per day.

Finally, the government stepped in and made fax broadcasting essentially illegal – unless and until you have established a business or personal relationship with someone who has given you prior permission to receive faxes from you.

Sounds kind of like how it is with e-mail these days, huh?

I had to agree. It was getting ridiculous. My company could afford to receive the faxes and didn’t have to pay any telephone charges to get them – but, even today, faxes cost the recipient paper and ink (if nothing else) to receive.

I raise these half-foggy memories of an era gone by hoping you see the similarities. You can’t very easily stick a fax machine in your shirt pocket (unless, of course, you get the right app that turns your mobile phone into a fax). But, everyone carries their mobile phones around with them. Unlike the land-line phones and faxes of old, today, you can reach folks on their mobile devices everywhere.

Don’t Bet the Farm on Mobile Marketing

The potential audience you can reach is gigantic. And extremely lucrative — for now.

The “for now” is all determined by exactly how you approach mobile marketing.

Consider the fact that many people do not have “unlimited” plans on their phones. For many, they have a limited number of text messages they can send or receive before adding additional charges to their bill. Others have plans that charge them for every text they send or receive.

How do you suppose your “marketing” message is going to be received by someone who will literally be penalized for receiving it?

For this reason, alone, I highly recommend that you avoid sending text message blasts anywhere, for any reason.

I’d venture a guess that the current legislation we have in place regarding broadcast faxes wouldn’t have ever come about had everyone stuck to delivering information people actually wanted to receive via fax broadcast. In fact, fax broadcasting is still alive today, pretty much on a subscription or opt-in basis. You subscribe to receive the information or you receive it because of a pre-existing relationship.

So, to make an effort at mobile marketing effective, even if you must use text messaging, it pays to deliver content of value to the recipient; enough value the recipient would gladly pay to receive.

Mobile Marketing is another channel

As I said earlier, I have only begun to peel back the layers involved in mobile marketing. There are countless opportunities available beyond simple text messaging.

As a publisher, I can see how mobile publishing is definitely the new way we will all begin receiving customized information that we value. As our mobile devices come closer and closer to the palm-sized computers science fiction fans used to drool over, the publishing model adapts extremely well all the way through.

In all honesty, publishers have it made – that’s why I is one. (wink)

If you can present hot, interesting information that people with a shared interest will find useful, mobile devices become just another platform for delivering what you produce.

It’s the same basic format that’s worked for publications and broadcasters for decades. You provide information or entertainment that viewers or readers value and, in return, they become receptive recipients of any offer you might make to purchase things from you or your sponsors.

Feeding the Mobile Monster

Getting content for mobile is the same as it is for anything else. Search the press release websites for news releases in your niche at www.PRWeb.com. Grab whatever stories you see there. Look for cool links to sites and late breaking neat new products and ideas your list would like to hear about. Then, offer it to them on a regular basis.

It sounds like a lot of work – and it is a little bit. But the work is easy and fun. And you can use what you find any number of ways. Put it on your blog. Send it to your email list. Put it in your online newsletter. Then send notices about the news to your mobile customers. Enable your website so people can subscribe to mobile alerts and send them things they would thank you for sending.

The key is to keep them reading and waiting for your next alert. And to never disappoint your prospects and customers when they take action and buy.

There IS one major difference in the current trend toward mobile marketing. Something that was incredibly difficult to accomplish with fax broadcasting. You also have the option to entertain your list.

Entertainment is huge online. Today’s mobile devices are just hand-held extensions of the web, so you can utilize all the same power of audio, video and computer gaming elements to your advantage to win the hearts and minds of your prospects and customers.

I don’t recall too many people ever sending me truly entertaining fax broadcasts.

There’s a huge difference between slamming someone’s text message “in” box with blatantly commercial messages and providing your prospects and customers with something to help them while away the time while they wait in line, or wait in traffic…or just while they wait for their favorite TV show to come on. Provide them with something entertaining and you’ll have won half the battle. It won’t matter any longer what happens, legislatively or otherwise, to the mobile marketing you are doing because your list, your prospects and customers, will love what you’re giving them and will gladly opt in.

You’re knocking on the door to someone’s private mobile device. Many of them must pay (one way or the other) to open the door. Would you rather be invited in or given the boot?

Alan Bechtold

Alan R. Bechtold has been a mail order marketer and publisher for more than 30 years. During that time, he has created and published numerous successful magazines, newspapers and newsletters, including successful trade journals for online marketers. He’s also acted as a consultant for thousands of information and website marketers.

Mobile Marketing Overview

by Dan Hollings

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