Last year, there was a lot of hype about organisations increasing their marketing budgets in 2013, and with increasing sales of mobile devices and apps in December 2012, mobile marketing is going to be a key part of this. But what should you be spending your mobile marketing budget on exactly?

At the moment, there’s a lot of talk about what you shouldn’t be doing, and not a lot about what you could be doing with mobile marketing.

Mobile Marketing isn’t as simple as creating an app and buying banner ads. Consumers are intelligent, aware and are experts at instantly researching your organisation – so your mobile marketing needs a strategy that is too.

Develop a Mobile Strategy

If you don’t invest time and money in a long-term strategy, you run the risk of misjudging your audience, and missing out on business. Investing in mobile ads can seem like a quick fix to your problems, but without a further reaching strategy in place, your marketing efforts will fall flat.

Think about what assets you have already at your disposal, what technological knowledge you have in-house, or through your networks. Join these with your understanding of your customers, and your strategy will show you your options and what steps you can take to start incorporating mobile marketing into your existing plans.

Spending some time and money developing a mobile strategy these ideas now could save you from missing opportunities in the future.

Get Advice from Experts

It can be easy to forget that mobile is a relatively new marketing tool. This means that there really isn’t that much information out there, compared to other forms of marketing. Luckily, there are a few researchers and consultants who’ve been working with mobile devices for a few years now, ourselves included, you can tap into this expertise and move your brand forward.

You know your customers, and consultants know mobile. By working with mobile experts you can really make the most of that knowledge, especially in the fast-changing mobile market. With experts you can find out how your current marketing could be translated to mobile, which of your ideas have legs and what trends are relevant to your business.

Sprint your Ideas

If you can group together the key players in your organisation in one place, you could try a Sprint approach. A Sprint is a day dedicated to getting leaders of the various departments in your organisation together, to focus on a single task. The outcome is an achievable set of actions. In this case, coming up with a ideas for mobile marketing that centres around your organisation.

Pooling the collective knowledge about your product or service, from different angles – like marketing, sales and technology – can open up new ideas. In the past, we’ve found this kind of approach gets results, especially when people in your organisation are difficult to pin down. Get everyone together, get ideas flowing, and start unlocking the knowledge that’s already within your organisation.
If you want to dig a bit deeper into mobile, we’ve outlined some of the things to consider in our White Paper: Why digital media agencies need a mobile app strategy