Mobile marketing gives consumers the ability to access content anywhere at any time. It is essential for marketers to continuously create content that delivers the type of value consumers are looking for. Marketers have to be able to give up some control of their brand in order to fully engage consumers.

Mobile marketing focuses on real-time data collection and analysis while simultaneously retaining constant contact with a customer base. The use of mobile marketing and social media allows businesses to embrace customer service, market responsiveness, and maintain their brand’s voice in a technology-driven market.

Take for example Pandora who launched its first mobile app in 2008. Pandora’s competitive advantage is their unique ability to personalize music and give consumers the ultimate music experience. Not only are consumers able to listen to music whenever and wherever they are, but Pandora introduces us to similar artists further developing our experiences as music listeners.

Pandora cultivates the consumer experience through artist suggestions and encourages consumers to explore related “products”.  Their connection with Facebook lets users see what type of music our friends “like” expanding its reach to its target market. Pandora embraces the power of the people and maintains its status at the top of music recommendation services because of their mobile accessibility.

Through mobile and online marketing, advertisers can target consumers by using certain demographics and traits (such as gender, ZIP code location, and type of music) increasing their local-market penetration. This is where analytics come into play – giving hard numbers for traffic, click through rates, time visitors spend on pages and how they like to share information.

Mobile marketing optimizes consumer engagement and produces real-time results for advertisers making it one of the most prevalent and powerful marketing tools in the “social” world. By delivering content in multiple ways, mobile marketing supports consumer power and embraces customer engagement.

Being responsive is at the core of interactive marketing.

Consumer empowerment has taken over marketer power for what seems like the past decade. With the tremendous growth of social media, consumers expect marketers to know everything about their buying habits and patterns. Social media has enabled consumer loyalty, but not necessarily the consumer experience. A company may have a massive brand presence on Facebook, but having one million fans does not mean they are giving the consumer the desired brand experience.

Interactive Marketing Plus

Social media provides the opportunity for market researchers to listen to and mine consumer insights, but this is not the only opportunity presented. Social media allows consumers to directly respond to the changing marketing conditions. Social networking has created a virtual space for people to be advocates for their fellow brand ambassadors. However, interactive marketing involves more than just internet marketing.

Crowdsourcing & Measurable Results

Consumers are more likely to talk about a brand via social media rather than through surveys. Although social networks use analytical software to produce measureable results, they are slow to make the data, analysis, and insights available to marketers. Marketers need to reconnect with consumers to optimize the consumer promise and the brand promise.

The mission and challenge for marketers is to be responsive to consumers’ concerns and behaviors with a more measureable, data driven approach by customizing the marketing experience.

It is time for marketers to engage with consumers and effectively meet their expectations. The question remains: when it comes to interactive marketing, who is really in control?

Two dimensional QR codes have been alive and abroad for several years and yet, the U.S. hasn’t quite taken to them.  Customers and users still aren’t sure what to do with them or why they’re on packages and posters. The early adopters didn’t spread as quickly as other technologies that were more tangible.

Marketers must educate the public about using the QR codes, why they are useful and why they are integral to our mobile world. Perhaps they’ve been marketed wrong or not at all – there certainly was no debut like the unveiling of the iPad2 so the codes have largely fallen under the radar. B2B Magazine found that “1% of U.S. mobile phone owners and 5% of smartphone owners had used a 2D barcode scanner in the previous three months” (B2B 3.14.11, p.11).

The importance of the QR code is its ability to act as a bridge between our physical and printed world to the virtual world. The 2D codes offer a direct line to further information for consumers. Post™ Cereals, Macy’s and art museums now sport the codes as another way to attract their audience to the continued conversation (discounts, events, consumer appreciation, surveys, give-aways, contests) and further strengthen the feedback loop. The inherent risks of the technology are broken links, codes that aren’t compatible with users’ mobile devices and thus loss of interest. Given time to develop and greater accessibility this could be the new technology with which the U.S. finally gets on board.

What does net neutrality and its ensuing court battles have to do with B2B and B2C marketing strategies?  A bushel and a peck.

Since fall of last year, the F.C.C. and large corporations (Google, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast) have been duking it out over government regulation of the internet – which as of right now is still considered an information service and therefore a public resource.  The internet is the last standing outlet for democratized free information — telecommunications services are far more privatized, without F.C.C. regulation, and so can determine what information a user views.

“The suits could potentially free Internet service providers from regulation — allowing them to treat their own content better than that of rivals, and block content that they didn’t like or competed with. Verizon and AT&T have about 60 percent of wireless subscribers. And 80 percent of Americans live in areas with only two wireline broadband providers. In a market with such slender competition, consumers are likely to lose out.” (3.6.11, Net Neutrality, back in court, NYT)

So how does this affect a marketer? Well, it’s really quite simple.  Social media has exploded in the industry as the best way to establish working relationships with established and would-be consumers.

Interactive marketing works off diverse and publicly accessible platforms to interact freely with the masses.  Marketers on the small side of business and upstarts would lose the advantage of the last free information channel and new clientele.  Now, that open channel is vulnerable to restriction and tiered-pricing for faster access to predetermined content.

At the very least if net neutrality becomes a thing of the past, the SEO (search engine optimization) and mobile marketing games will have to adapt and at a cost.

” ‘Cause you can look right through me, walk right by me, and never know I’m there…” Or so goes Amos Hart’s sad little song in the musical Chicago.  Poor invisible Amos’ verse embodies the challenges facing websites struggling to create relevant content.

There’s been much debate over the amount of social media we process as humans on a daily basis: are we so inundated with messaging that we are developing blind spots?  This becomes the main hurdle facing the advertising business and it means blending traditional with more conversation-oriented practices.

Consumers now look to companies’ Facebook pages before being directed to their home pages.  If you want to be in AllState’s “good hands” or reap the benefits of State Farm’s magical jingle, commercials are telling you to visit their Facebook page.

At the end of the day, something is marketed so it can be sold and if we go back to the founding principles of customer service, the conversation between consumer and company reigns supreme.  Oddly enough, social media in its cold digital form has resurrected the more human approach to sales while benefiting the bottom line.

Questions, concerns, praise and complaints can all be aired on a company’s Facebook page allowing brands to respond directly to consumers and establish an open line of communication.  What better way to get instant feedback while developing a relationship with the very people to whom you sell?  The concept of the “invisible man” gets broken down when companies encourage their consumers to actively participate in the discussion, whatever the topic.

Creating a robust web presence is important now more than ever. A website with top of the line graphics, enough flash to slow even a 15mbps download speed, won’t do you much good if you can’t target clients and increase qualified traffic.

So how do you do this? Create a client-serving site rather than a self-serving site

Start by developing relevant content. Providing value through your content will keep users on your site and show them your worth to their business. Research and get inside your potential client’s thought process.

What are they looking for? How can you solve their problems better than your competition?

Too often, companies focus on what they can do rather than what they can do for potential clients. There is a subtle but important distinction between these statements, and clients can tell the difference.

Next, make your site less complex. Focus on site functionality rather than flashy, complicated set-ups that look cool superficially, but ultimately distract viewers from their purpose. A site that is easy to navigate will result in more page views and more conversions than their flashy counterparts.

Finally, connect with potential clients in the environments they already frequent – like social media sites. The website is no longer the center of the internet universe. It is merely a part of a larger – more fluid – structure where social media sites and search engines connect users to valuable content.

Use this to your advantage by bringing potential clients to your site through social networks. One way to do this is by using social media sites to distribute your site’s content. Create daily blog posts and use Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc. to deliver traffic to your site.

Be sure to deliver valuable content and not a transparent sales pitch. Again, clients can see the difference. If the content you create is valuable and targeted to potential clients they will view more pages and – hopefully- invest in your services or buy your products.

Scott LoSasso, President of LoSasso Advertising, answers questions from the audience and panel moderator Gary Slack of Slack Barshinger at Google offices in Chicago.

In an effort to help traditional advertising agencies understand how to implement search marketing strategies, Google invited a panel of agency experts to share their insights on how they have used search marketing and other online strategies to improve client and agency performance.

Scott LoSasso comments, “I was flattered to be asked to sit on the panel. The past few years have been such an interesting time of change in this industry. We continue to work very hard with our clients and staff to integrate everything we do. It requires a vigilant effort and a fundamental shift in thinking. This was a fun event and I was happy to share some of what we have learned.”

Google offers a full suite of tools for search management, and they are in the process of rolling out new support services to help agencies leverage their platform.

David Fabbri is Creative Director of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by David)

Worldwide Partners, Inc. recently surveyed agency executives about the predicted direction of their clients’ advertising budgets for 2009.

It’s no surprise that many seem pessimistic, but digital marketing seems to be bucking the trend.

The next few years will be quite interesting for marketers. There will be a mad rush to learn how to make the web work harder, and agencies that understand direct response will win out.

A focus on measurement and marketing metrics along with an understanding of multi-variant testing and other direct marketing methods will provide a big advantage over traditional brand marketers.

Survey results show that digital marketing will grow for 62% of marketers in 2009. Given the economy, it is a critical year to do it right.
Don’t you think?

Video: Why Most Interactive Advertising Doesn’t Work

Click Here for Survey Results

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)

As we’ve moved into this protracted period of slow to negative growth, we have talked a lot about how spending allocations must change and how the web has affected the landscape of marketing.

But shifting the focus of the message is equally important.

When people are hurting, they buy differently; they need more value. As marketers, it is key to recognize that value is really all about benefit, not price. The benefits our products deliver are now more important than ever.

The pie is smaller—so fewer will grow. But this is a time when the fight for market share is critically important. The companies that learn how to strengthen their story and interactive approach in 2009 will be the greatest beneficiaries when we pull out of this mess.

This is not a simple task—it requires effort on several fronts, but it is not that complicated either. Step into your customers’ shoes and look at what they need. Align your strengths with their needs and make yourself easy to find. They will be doing more research and buying more carefully. This in itself gives you opportunity.

To find the silver lining in this economy is a real challenge—but if you make the effort to find it, it’s there.

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)

Scott LoSasso, President of LoSasso Advertising in Chicago, discusses marketing planning for 2009. With marketers concerned about the economy, it’s important to make sure that you don’t stop evolving. Online marketing is essential to  positioning your company for growth coming out of the economic slowdown.

David Fabbri is Creative Director of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by David)