One of our favorite new trends here at ReadWriteWeb is the quickly growing field of mobile technology and how we can take more of the Web along with us when we leave our computers. Because of the expanding popularity of smartphones and mobile data use, startups these days need to develop plans for marketing their brand on mobile devices at very early stages of their development. Cindy Krum, CEO of Rank-Mobile, a consulting firm focused on mobile marketing and SEO, is the author of this week’s featured read, Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are.
With chapters on mobile advertising, mobile web development and search engine optimization, Krum’s informative book is a great resource for first time entrepreneurs looking to take advantage of the mobile platform. There is also an entire chapter dedicated to the iPhone, a testament to the device’s influence on the mobile Web space.
“The iPhone has brought mobile Web access and mobile search to the masses,” writes Krum. “The iPhone represents only 8% of the mobile handsets but roughly 75% of the mobile search, and iPhones now account for one out of every 333 Web hits worldwide. The desire for Web access and Web search was always there – it was just being slowed by the bad user experience that other mobile phones provided.”
“The desire for Web access and Web search was always there – it was just being slowed by the bad user experience that other mobile phones provided.” – Cindy Krum
Krum also includes case studies from prominent businesses that have used mobile platforms to market their products. These include
,
,
,
,
and
. I was disappointed to not find any mention of the efforts being made by numerous companies to use augmented reality for mobile marketing, but the book does include the use of
.
Various types of bar codes and QR codes are described, as well as case studies of companies that put the technology to practical use. The book itself even joins in the QR fun by including a ScanLife EZ Code on the back cover. ScanLife is a mobile application and short code provider that allows companies to market specifically to camera phones. Users take a picture of the code using a ScanLife app and can be redirected to various forms of mobile content.
The strange thing about the book’s implementation of the ScanLife code is that it failed to include any mobile-specific content. After scanning the code with the ScanLife app on my iPhone, Safari launched and took me to the book’s homepage. Yes, Safari on the iPhone is a fully capable web browser, but it would have made more sense to create a website optimized for the iPhone’s smaller screen. A similar code I found while on a recent trip to Las Vegas took me to a special mobile promotion page with a video and special hotel rates.
The lesson to be learned here, and from other forms of mobile marketing, is that the content used should be native to the devices being used to view it. Simply adding a link to your normal webpage on a mobile device is not the best use of the technology. The hotel example was a much better implementation because it provided me with exclusive content that was also optimized for a smaller screen. It isn’t enough to shift the same marketing materials to mobile phones; mobile marketing is all about making the content unique and native.
Much more can be learned from the book and from the advice provided straight from the CEO of a company in the trenches of mobile marketing. Research shows that smartphones could be used more than personal computers in just a few years, so getting ahead on mobile marketing strategies is an important step for any early-stage company.
If you want to learn more about mobile trends, be sure to register for our ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7th in Mountain View, California.
Photo by Flickr user William Hook.
Disclosure: A review copy of this book was provided to ReadWriteWeb by Pearson Education and Que Publishing.
