In a question posted on twitter by Liz Broderick, “How has mobile marketing impacted or helped to enhance your clients’ or your products?” I’ll answer by lightly elaborating on the progression of mobile marketing.

The Beginning

In the US, the beginning of the mobile marketing before the iphone, android and the whole host of newer smart phones, companies were attempting mobile marketing through SMS campaigns. You’d often see “text ‘XYZ’ to 12345 for …”. This was alright and is usable by a larger audience because it can be used by every cell phone with SMS capabilities. The problem is that there is the potential for a carrier cost for the consumers wishing to participate and that the interaction is singular. It’s not that companies are necessarily trying to charge consumers, but it’s that the consumer’s carrier charges for SMS service at a “message-at-a-time” rate.

QR Codes

With the introduction of smart phones, more companies are able to integrate campaigns with a more sophisticated interaction level. Outside of the US, they’ve embraced this kind of user connection to brands much more rapidly. Audi Japan created a campaign using QR codes, while others like Pepsi have used them in print ads, outdoor boards, banners, and other clever media. The potential with this kind of interactions are very high. Take Japan’s Tada Gets’ use of QR codes throughout their magazine.

Location Based

Consumer brands teaming up with other forward thinking companies can benefit consumers and the brands symbiotically. Take Gowalla for example. The idea of allowing consumers to publicly “check in” and broadcast through other social media used by the consumer that they’re interacting with a brand is monumental and when paired with incentives such as custom “stickers”, discounts and other offerings by brands rewarding consumers from interacting with those brands. Also by utilizing the opportunity with services such as these, companies can easily drive business to a specific destination during specific periods at a fairly low cost with a higher adoption rate with consumers.

Barcodes

Also along those same lines as Gowalla, a newer company (at the time of this writing) called Sticky Bits has emerged and allows consumers and brands to attach and assign content to barcodes – any barcode. To take this idea into practice, a company could include a special offer and/or special product related infotainment, offers and bonus “content” to the packages of their products with encouragement for consumers to “scan” their products for these. Besides the obvious integration opportunity for games, like those “under the cap” games you often see with beverages, you can easily create other similar experiences with any brand.

Future Opportunities

Certainly there are far more opportunities and inspiring ideas that can be had about integrating mobile marketing into brand campaigns to provide engaging, relevant experiences to consumers that haven’t been documented and/or have yet to be discovered.