Making Mobile Marketing Successful

What does it take to make mobile marketing successful in engaging customers and achieving objectives such as building awareness and revenues?

• Google offers 10 tips for mobile marketing here, emphasizing the benefits and opportunities of customer engagement and usage data analysis. 
• Forrester's recipe for mobile marketing success includes establishing objectives, planning for measurement, and "big helpings of analysis."
• The Interactive Advertising Bureau mentions the most fundamental principle of all: Be sure your mobile website is optimized for users' screens, needs, and behavior, a point reiterated by the CEO of Brightedge.
• Be multichannel ready as customers choose either smartphone or tablet for convenient, instant access to goods, services, and information.

IKEA has the right idea: Understanding that customers want to be able to envision how a piece of furniture or an accessory would look in their home, the retailer has released a free augmented reality app (iOS and Android), keyed to 90 products in its latest catalog. Highlighted products will be identified by a special symbol in the catalog. Here's how it will work, according to an IKEA manager:

"That particular IKEA product will be able to be ... photographed or lifted off the IKEA catalog page and superimposed in that location in [customers' homes]. Let’s say it’s a sofa that they want to try out, in their own living room, to see how that sofa would look amongst the other furniture they have in their home."

In short, the app helps customers make a more informed buying decision, providing added detail when and where needed, whether in the store or when paging through the catalog. No wonder the IKEA app was the top marketing branded app downloaded during 2012, according to Econsultancy. Research showed the IKEA app engaged customers for a longer period than the catalog alone, a measure of success.