Notes from AMA Mobile Marketing Event

I attended an interesting and informative event at NPR's office last Thursday night on mobile marketing put together by the DC chapter of the American Marketing Association. I've talked a lot about mobile marketing on this blog over the years.

Just my two cents: it's been a long time coming, but I think the promise of (at least non-Location Based Services (LBS)) mobile marketing is at hand.

The event had a strong, experienced panel who confirmed a lot of what I already knew about marketing on mobile devices but had a lot of new compelling information. Here are the panelists:

DP Venkatesh, CEO, mPortal

Mary Gramaglia, Director of Sales, Sybase 365

Michael Lieberman, Mobile Integration Director, Hyperfactory

Demian Perry, Product Manager Content Development and Mobile Operations, NPR

Chris Parandian, Founder, Tin Can Communications

(Thanks to the ever-charming Old Town Alexandria resident, Limor Shafman, for moderating the panel!!)

The topics of discussion ranged from extremely tactical to very high level. Here are some of the takeaways...

1. Mobile marketing is a unique medium due to the intimate and individual nature of the interaction. People don't share phones so their handheld is an extension of the person and his/her personality. When marketing through mobile, that relationship must be respected.
2. Ask for help. Mobile marketing is complex and cannot be planned in a silo without reference to your other branding, marketing and PR efforts. Like all media, mobile marketing has strengths and weaknesses- plan for both. Mobile is digital and can be tracked like any digital campaign. But be sure mobile targets your audience and make sure your message is relevant for that audience.
3. Don't distract, annoy, bore, confuse or attempt to hold your audience hostage.
4. Mobile marketing is about engagement rather than reach. Always include a call to action to further interact with you. Mobile marketing is, at its core, a social medium, akin to social networking. Give people a chance to participate and express themselves. Don't blast a brand message to 100,000 people.
5. Go to the Mobile Marketing Association and read their marketing guidelines.

Do you think the panel left anything out? Should marketers think about mobile marketing in a different way? Or ignore it?