This year’s holiday shopper WILL be mobile, will your business?

With the college football season in full swing and Thanksgiving just around the corner, advertisers throughout the nation are already finalizing their plans for reaching consumers this holiday season.  And with new media channels on the rise (mobile, social networks), many brands and businesses are adapting their marketing efforts to the newly mobile consumer.  This consumer—equipped with constant access to multiple product distribution channels and vendors—will be leveraging the mobile web to find the lowest price, the highest rated product or service… the overall best bang for their buck.  In anticipation of the mobilized shopping frenzy, many brands have allocated sizeable budgets to mobile marketing this season, which average $50,000-$250,000 according to eMarketer Daily.

Now, with the holidays steadily approaching, businesses and brands without a strong mobile presence urgently need to begin planning and executing a strategy for reaching these new consumers.  Fortunately, if your business does not have a mobile presence just yet, there is still time to get mobile before the 2010 holiday season gets underway.  But how can you reach shoppers and foster engagement with your brand over the mobile web? Stop planning and start acting with these mobile marketing tips for engaging and incentivizing users during this year’s holiday shopping season.

Market your Marketing

Mobile is a great channel for extending your brand’s reach, but marketers shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking ‘build it and they will come.’ Yes, it may be a form of marketing in and of itself, but much like with social media, brands that show consumers the way are often more successful on the mobile web than those that sit back and hope users will stumble upon their mobile site or app on their own.  With social media, businesses accomplished this by providing links and icons—ways to ‘Like,’ ‘Share,’ or otherwise interact over social networks, driving traffic to these hubs, instead of waiting for consumers to seek them out on the new platform.

The same rules can and should be applied to mobile marketing.  Though driving users to a mobile page may be a bit more challenging, marketers can direct mobile users to their mobile website or app by providing a link to it in email marketing campaigns and newsletters (after all, email is the most popular activity among mobile users).  Alternatively, marketers can bridge the gap between print media and the mobile web with QR codes.  By directing users to this new platform, marketers can increase the channels by which consumers engage with their brand, and increase the chances of reaching mobile holiday shoppers.

Go Beyond Marketing on the Mobile Web… Incentivize

While developing a presence on the mobile web is a good start, brands that want to drive sales through the mobile channel need to incentivize users, especially during the holiday season.  Mobile, as a platform, enables marketers to cut through the excessive advertising clamor and reach users directly and in real time, unlike other forms of media

Marketers can successfully execute this strategy and start engaging users by implementing mobile coupons as a part of their mobile marketing strategy.  Using coupons over the mobile platform, brands can not only connect with users very directly and personally but moreover, provide incentive for visiting a local store and/or making a purchase.

Mobile coupons are a good choice for incentivizing consumers because their effectiveness is proven.  The average conversion rate for coupons delivered over mobile channels—through SMS messaging, mobile advertising or a business’ mobile website, is 5-15%.  Also, consumers tend to react quite well to coupon offerings or incentives.  One need look no farther than crowdsourced services that offer daily discounts, such as Groupon, Living Social, and sites like RetailMeNot.com.  In fact, as these services prove, consumers are not only receptive to such marketing materials, but in fact, today’s mobile consumers actively seek out such deals, creating great opportunities that marketers can capitalize on over the mobile web.

Provide a Fluid User Experience

One of the central benefits of mobile marketing is that it integrates so well into convergent marketing campaigns.  For example, coupons delivered over the mobile web are successful at driving spending, but not always across the same channel—users redeem coupons in stores.

In some sense, the mobile web is the perfect companion to brick and mortar retail outlets, as it allows marketers to reach users personally and drive sales in stores through the mobile platform.  For this reason, it is essential that a component of any vendor’s mobile website or app is a store locator—particularly if there are multiple locations or chains, one service brands should always offer is a way of locating the nearest store.  By providing a fluid mobile-to-store transition, marketers can capitalize on the interrelation of the two channels and facilitate consumers’ progression through the sales process.

These are great ways for businesses to engage users over the mobile web year round, but especially during holiday season when retail and hospitality spending peaks.  And while it might seem early in the game, brands that aren’t planning for this season stand to lose much-needed sales opportunities. With mobile predicted to be a $1 billion industry in 2011, it’s time for brands to start moving forward on the mobile web—and these recommendations are a great place to start.