Mobile Marketing Choices: What Should You Use?

Thinking of going mobile with your marketing? What do you use? The number 1 thing that marketers should be looking at when entering mobile marketing is the content. Marketing materials should have relevant, interesting and informative content. It should move and persuade customers to either buy the product or try to learn more about it.

The second most important thing is the delivery. How do you make your content accessible to your audience? Right now, there are four ways to deliver your message to your target customers: QR codes, near-field communication, augmented reality and SMS.

However, how do you choose which one is most effective for what you are trying to do?

A new service called Amplify is promising to make mobile marketing even simpler for businesses. It aims to offer all four delivery channels and make it easier for their clients to use them.

The company behind this is called Eye. Its CEO, Gerry Thorley, explains that instead of just pushing whatever is the most popular platform available, the company would try to take a look at the marketing aims of the company and suggest the appropriate platform. Thorley laments that mobile marketing programs do not take into consideration the client’s needs, and so they fail.

However, as a business owner, do you really need to get the Amplify service? If you know what QR codes, AR, NFC and SMS can do, and then you might be able to decide for yourself.

Augmented reality is great if you have a physical presence, or a physical marketing material such as a business card or flyer that you can use to have your AR graphics play. You only need a phone with a camera to do this. However, AR applications are quite limited.

If you have your information online, such as a brochure or a video, then you might want to take your customers there either with NFC or QR codes. QR codes might need many things such as a QR code-reading app, while not too many people may have an NFC-enabled phone.

SMS is great for spreading the word around, but you might be very limited in terms of engaging your customers. It is like advertising on TV, it has the potential to reach a wider portion of your audience but it may not have the impact you want. It is also very easy to ignore.