Post 12 of 12

Developing a Mobile Strategy –  Typical Process Model

Over the course of this series we have discussed the many different aspects of understanding, developing, planning and implementing your mobile strategy.

As part of this final post I want to talk about the 4 stage process model that I use with most clients when we begin to model their mobile channel expectations.

Stage One is all about you the client, setting your expectations for what you want to get out of your mobile channel activity as a business, discussing how you want to define the success of the activity and defining a budget for the channel for the year , month, activity etc…

Next you have Stage Two; this is the beginning of understanding your audience, analyzing the data you have in your database and discovering where you fall short. Do you have mobile numbers for all your customers? Do you have any knowledge of the devices your customers have i.e iPhone, Blackberry etc….

If you don’t have a good understanding of their needs and concerns at this stage then your strategy will ultimately deliver poor results. Ensure your database is cleansed and up to date before you embark on the mobile journey.

Another question for Stage Two is… Has my database been opted in to receive mobile communications? If your customers haven’t opted in to receive mobile messages from you then you need to run an opt in / opt out campaign as a priority.

Once you are sure that you have a good awareness of your customers needs, you have mobile numbers for them and you have an opt in record for each of them, you are ready to consider your value proposition.

Consider the what, when and why of your value proposition, what is your proposition? What value does it give to your customers? When does your proposition sales period start? When does it end? Why is mobile the best way to promote it?

Finally for Stage Two, once you have your Value proposition, you need to choose your deployment solution, how are you going to send your chosen communications? In house or with a partner company? Internal tool or external party? All these things need deciding before you pick your solution.

Next is Stage Three, choose the types of message you want to send, is it a basic SMS for instance or an MMS with a link to a mobile website? Make sure you create your assets carefully, consider the other channels that are available to you to compliment the message type you’re using. Make sure you test your communication include other stakeholders in the testing; make sure you get all your feedback on rendering before you sign off on your creative.

You are now ready to send your mobile communication as part of your marketing strategy.

Once you begin sending your chosen communications it is important to constantly evaluate and measure them so you can continually increase performance and hit internal KPI’s. This is Stage Four, analyze and make recommendations for future campaigns, make amends to campaign structure if needed and make changes to process, again if needed.
Of course you don’t need to follow my process model to the letter, some things in this model you may do already, some may not be needed and some might not be applicable at the present time.

However, by following the basic process using my four stage model you will be able to achieve a sound, structured Mobile Strategy by understanding your data, achieving buy in from senior stakeholders on commitment to the project, either financially or with resource and understanding just what your company will take from this project.

We can write this as a formula;

UA + CCO + CC = SMS

“Understanding Audience + Confirming Company Objectives + Corporate Commitment = Successful Mobile Strategy”

You now have an easy to remember formula and a four stage process that takes us from initial diagnosis of internal benchmarks and expectations through to deploy and evaluations at Stage Four.

Good Luck!!

themobileexpert