Takeaways: Microsoft Mobile Marketing Summit

During this full-day summit, hosted by Microsoft Marketing Excellence, we heard many popular themes being repeated throughout the 20+ sessions. You can learn more about the summit here.

Here are the main points we saw being repeated:

·         Mobile is still very new and no one has perfected it.

·         Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and try new things in mobile.

·         When developing for mobile web or building applications, make sure whatever you're making is platform agnostic, and can be viewed on any smartphone device.

·         Mobile is the perfect platform to form a new kind of relationship with your customers by building tools to make their lives easier.

·         Main tools on the phone are being leveraged in new ways all the time: camera, gps, gyro, etc.

·         IT Pro’s are the number one users of smartphones and number one users of mobile browsers.

·         Mobile marketing and advertising is very inexpensive compared to traditional digital campaigns.

·         When planning your digital marketing initiatives, don’t think of mobile last, and don’t add it on last to campaigns—think about how mobile can be leveraged in a new way for a campaign.

·         Mobile marketing isn’t just for mobile browsers—it’s SMS and more.

·         Brainstorm ways to engage with your mobile audience daily, since a mobile device is the number one thing most people carry with them and pay attention to everyday.

·         Design specifically for mobile—don’t assume that building the same PC site will translate to mobile—pay attention to load times and screen sizes and resolution to get the best UI, UX.

·         When designing content to display to a mobile user, assume the user's time is limited, as mobile phones are used most often in short time chunks.

·         Also in regards to mobile website development, limit navigation and options—give the consumer exactly what you want them to see, right away, very few clicks.

·         Test and learn as you go, set KPI’s but allow for budget and time to test, test, test.

·         Explore options for integrating local results within mobile search and app results—much of mobile usage is to find information around the user's immediate location. 

Mobile is exciting and fresh--it's not emerging media anymore--use it and learn from it!

Watch conference sessions here.