A lot has changed in the marketing world since the days of radio and print advertisements. Today marketers can reach thousands of people in seconds by using email and text messages. Despite all the changes however, some basic truths about marketing remain and always will. Mobile marketers who think they can break those rules should think again.
Ten basic lessons
Here’s a look at 10 marketing lessons that mobile marketers would do well to remember:
1. The customer is king or queen. The customer must be the center of all your marketing efforts. In all your mobile communication make sure your customers are becoming your friends.
2. Relationships take time. Don’t be in such a hurry to shove information down your customers’ throats. Take time to listen to them and hear their feedback. When you do send messages to them, make them as concise and simple as possible. Confused customers don’t buy.
3. The customer says what the brand is. Marketers shouldn’t try to control the brand image, the customer is in charge of that. The marketer’s job is to steer customers in the right direction not try to control how they view the brand.
4. What you say may not be what they hear. Do more listening than talking, make sure that the message they’re hearing is the messaging that you’re intending to send. A good marketer is constantly fine tuning the message to reduce the opportunity for miscommunication.
5. Creating buzz can be good and bad. In other words, create good buzz, the type that generates awareness of your product or service. Avoid bad buzz that tends to just annoy people.
6. It’s easier to hit a big target than lots of little ones. Don’t try to break your audience down to many tiny groups and create separate messages for each of them. Try to find commonality in your audience and create one message to reach all of them.
7. Numbers lie. Most research is done only to confirm what you already believe. Try to be open-minded about research and rely heavily on customer input.
8. Satisfaction is a starting point, not the end goal. Don’t settle for satisfied customers, seek to create passionate, even fanatic, customers.
9. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Be patient with customers as you grow your brand. Don’t expect customers to be loyal and trusting right at first.
10. Immediacy can be bad. Just because you can send out a message that can be read by thousands in just a few seconds doesn’t mean you should. Think long and hard about what you say and how you say it before putting it out for everyone to see…
