What is Mobile Marketing?

I noticed something very interesting that got me thingking that the guys who understand the concept of mobile best are the street vendors in every city.

They set-up carts on the street corners and they sell all sorts of items like DVDs and sunglasses and purses. But when they feel a few drops of rain, they all quickly flip their carts over and start selling umbrellas.

This is a brilliant sales strategy because they are adjusting their marketing based on what people are doing (walking around the city) and what is happening around them (it is raining) to deliver a message and product that really resonates.

With mobile and the use of location, advertisers now have the same opportunity. Using location capabilities marketers can infer a lot about what people are doing.

If they are in an airport they are likely travelers, if they are in a shopping mall they are likely shopping, and so on and so forth. And because the advertiser can know where they are delivering the ads, they can also tell things about the environment and context of the person seeing the ad such as the weather, traffic, and nearby events. This creates a massive opportunity to tailor each and every message and finally begins to unlock the power of mobile marketing.

The opportunity is immense, but location is not without its problems. The industry is still immature and running these campaigns is not easy. But fundamentally, to get real performance from mobile and to unlock the pent up budgets of advertisers, we need to truly understand what makes mobile unique and play to its strength: Location + Context + Relevance.