The plethora of smart communication devices on the market and in our pockets today represent a seismic shift in the way information is consumed. The critical component in Marketing is about more than creating compelling content but also about distributing it through a variety of online channels. Content marketers and business owners should be looking at all available channels to engage with customers – in print, in-person, and online (including mobile) asking:

Who is your newly-mobile customer base?

What does it want from you?

How should you deliver it?

How can a business make the most of the opportunities provided by this change?

These are all questions to consider as you build your marketing strategy and customer base using mobile technology to promote your business.

Guest speaker at the Riviera Business Club's Breakfast meeting, Mike Hardaker, successful business entrepreneur (AngloInfo) and owner of jag.gr captivated the audience with his passion and knowledge during his forty-five minute presentation,  ‘How we can best use  mobile communication  to grow our business’. Hardaker firstly reminded the audience of the history of the communication tools we grew up with thirty years ago; how we have evolved from heavy, slow computers and Rolodex card files to today’s smart connected devices ever present in the hands of the connected world.

His lecture was organised around the four leading platforms today and the options to use connected tools. As Hardaker generalised: Apple (most costly) is for the graphic/designer prone, Android fits better to students and open source devotees, Blackberry is used mostly in the corporate world (or for organising riots in the UK) and Microsoft, with a strong PR machine behind it is mostly used for others privy to Microsoft platforms. Hardaker then addressed the breakfast crowd with his rundown of how we could use these mobile devices to reap business benefits.

Voice communications i.e. the phone – often  overlooked today but still an effective tool for business… let’s not forget we can actually ‘talk’ to people! But use care not to abuse mobile numbers when calling for business, use the office numbers.

SMS is not only texting for fun, but can be a smart tool to communicate to existing customers. Rather than putting a letter in the mail, an optometrist can send an SMS, ‘Your contact lenses are ready to be picked up’ to your mobile phone. Not a good tool to use to find new customers though. A large organisation can benefit from  clever and cost effective use of SMS.

Both Voice and SMS can be used to communicate to everyone, whereas more sophisticated or costly web tools are not used as widely, so don’t underestimate these prevalent tools.

Email can be effective if written to the devices it will be appearing on, such as a small handheld screen on a mobile phone or a tablet. So think firstly about capturing attention, how people read their email, where they read it for a first look, then write your message for that mobile device. Re-purposing of content to mobile devices is vital, if you want to make the best impression, or readers (or customers) will go elsewhere. “You have about a 5 second window of opportunity to catch attention” notes Hardaker. So write your emails with the mobile devices in mind for the 1st read, then if it is interesting the reader will come back for a 2nd read later. And don’t include any difficult or large frames to take up space as they don’t come over on many phones.

A mobile Website must be designed to be easily downloaded and read on all smart devices and platforms. Again, pay attention to the fact your readers want to get to the information they need without having to click through too many pages, and spend time downloading heavy images. So re-purposing of information to different platforms and tools is vital, or your readers will go elsewhere less frustrating. If you want to see the difference, check out a major website like CNN then go to CNNmobile on your phone. “Don’t put up barriers to usage” warns Hardaker. And don’t design your sight with Flash technology, which is arrogant, as mobile devices can’t read Flash”.

A Web Application is any application that uses a web browser as a client. The application can be as simple as a message board or a guest sign-in book on a website, or as complex as a word processor or a spreadsheet. If you fill-in your taxes online, you are using a Web App. Google Apps, Microsoft Office Live, and WebEx WebOffice are examples of the newest generation of web applications. The ability to update and maintain web applications without distributing and installing software on potentially thousands of client computers is a key reason for their popularity, as is the inherent support for cross-platform compatibility. Common web applications include online retail sales, online auctions,  and many other functions. Web apps or online apps can be a faster, cheaper, more efficient way of deploying software in your business. Rather than buying a software license, having to install it on your servers or local computers, keeping up with updates — all of which can be expensive and take time — you can simply go online and sign up for an account. In a few minutes you are using the software. And typically you pay a monthly fee, meaning that you don’t have to pay a license fee up front.

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