Best Practices for Mobile Engagement in 2012

Mobile marketing is becoming increasingly popular among brands, and businesses must adopt best practices in order to reach customers with meaningful mobile messaging. Best practices for mobile engagement focus on people, instead of processes that keep track of transactions and various types of records. It involves a lot more than simply making a screen available to buyers and calling it a mobile app; instead, the hallmark of this type of technology is that it involves two-way interaction between the customer and the business systems.

Mobile marketing is increasingly focused on the customer's location, and this makes for an immediate, relevant interaction with the buyer from where they are at a set time. This type of system allows a business to anticipate, and then meet, its customer’s needs in a much more efficient manner.

In a sense, I can see that this type of mobile marketing was developed from the idea of placing impulse items near a cash register at a retail store. The retailer is trying to interest the buyer in adding on something to his or her order, and having that person make an in-the-moment decision. Mobile marketing works the same way, since businesses can present offers and suggest alternative or add-on products by sending messages to the buyer’s smart phone or tablet at just the right moment. This trend is likely to continue, since the number of smartphone users in the US and worldwide continues to rise.