Mobile marketingMobile marketing has several key barriers, that people already working in marketing and mobile marketing often don’t realize. I believe this is why on some markets, mobile services and mobile marketing are much ahead from other countries.

Of course, the main barrier of mobile marketing is user accessing mobile services, which allows them to consume mobile marketing. I believe that things like mobile Facebook and mobile handsets are a vital thing for succession of mobile marketing.

User oriented - Accessibility to services

But there are other barriers in the road, that have to be thought through before mobile marketing gets even communicated. Those are for example:

  1. Mobile handset settings - the settings of a mobile handset - specifically its accessibility of mobile web - we all know iPhone is so successful because it is basically not sold without a data connection. This type of bundling will be vital.
  2. Mobile tariff activation barrier - how hard is it to active the mobile tariff? Will it be complicated? We see operators in the same country - one billing per kilobyte, and one billing on a daily basis ($ 1) or monthly tariff ($ 10), whatever is greater. Those are affordable billing methods and you don’t even have to communicate them, because it will not exceed a price where users would go into shock (which most of the time, they still do). Also, if there needs to be any activation done, and it’s not out of the box - there will be drop-out
  3. Accessibility to the application mobile web - the connection to mobile web has to be easily accessible for mobile users - if it is not accessible, it will not be used.
An ideal of course down the road is that:
  1. All handsets have preset working settings (even latest Android / iPhone smartphones, that is still not true)
  2. All data tarrifs are pre-activated
  3. One click to mobile browsing

Business oriented

Now regarding the business side of mobile marketing. For it to work everywhere, some things have to be hit:
  1. Mobile marketing is a separate column on budgets - not just an addition to some digital marketing, but is perceived completelly as a separate medium, including the creative
  2. Education - many brand managers and managers of local agencies (maybe other then London and US sometimes) around the world are still not convinced of mobile marketing - they don’t know it, they are not convinced by the case studies, as there is very limited of them available on the market
  3. Knowledge base - there is very little public information on how many people access the mobile web, what are the numbers, numbers of impressions, etc. - this information slowly gets published by operators. I have seen this trend yearly, then quarterly in some countries. Now, if you are lucky - you get monthly numbers from mobile operators - but it is still very rare and you rather get them if you ask them all. So direct access to knowledge - I want to advertise this, this, this -> there, there, there
  4. Media planning - Mobile advertising should be like advertising on Facebook. I take a credit card, target my users, what I am interested in, punch in my details, upload the ad = and the ad gets launched.
  5. Long-tail advertising not possible - Mobile marketing can really kick-off with entry of long-tail advertising, where even smaller businesses will be able to market their brands based on the location of the person loading the page. That will of course be very amazing.
  6. Companies have to realize mobile marketing is a unique medium - they have to build new content for it - applications, mobile web sites, content, widgets, games - anything to keep the users in the game with their brand

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