by Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content

Marketing keeps getting harder.

With print advertising, you just had to stand out among the articles and other ads in the newspaper.

Online advertising raised the bar, forcing you to not just compete with content and advertising, but instant messages and emails as well.

Now with mobile, you have to compete with everything happening in the real world. The fire truck siren down the street. Running into a friend on the sidewalk. The waiter discussing today’s specials.

What is the most effective way to engage mobile users? We posed that very question to your peers in the MarketingSherpa 2012 Mobile Marketing Benchmark Report.

Q: Indicate the level of EFFECTIVENESS for the mobile engagement and relevancy tactics used by your organization.

Click here to see a printable version of this chart

My top three takeaways from this chart are …

Use video to grab attention and interest

As you can see, mobile video content was considered the most effective tactic, with 38% of marketers calling it "very effective."

Video has moving pictures, audio and it is dynamic and compelling. It can be dramatic, comedic or informative — thus, video is able to compete with the short attention spans and multilayered distractions accompanying mobile device usage.

Be device specific

While you can count on consistency with your newspaper advertisements, mobile is not just one thing. First of all, there are multiple operating systems — most prominently Android and iOS.

While Samsung has the most mobile penetration in the United States, Sharp leads in Japan and Nokia leads in Germany. Even in the U.S., the top three mobile manufacturers (Samsung, LG and Motorola) hold less than half of the market.

Then, of course, there are not only smartphones, but also tablets and feature phones (especially prominent if you have an international or less wealthy target market).

Your content and promotions can render differently across all of these devices and operating systems, so it’s important to test your offers on many different devices (or at least use a computer-based tool that emulates these devices).

If that wasn't difficult enough, if your marketing involves apps, those apps will be OS and device specific (think smartphone versus tablet). Not only OS specific, but OS-version specific (without the latest operating system installed, your customers may not even be able to download the app even if they have an earlier version of the same OS).

Oy vey. It's enough to give a marketer a headache.

It’s easy to see why optimizing messages for specific devices and platforms can be crucial to mobile marketing success.

Mobile payment may be premature

While a large majority of marketers found "providing an easy, fast payment system to secure conversions" to be effective, a significant minority — 14% — found it not effective.

Catalog and TV direct marketers often provide a "cash on delivery (COD)" option. You may also want to consider making alternative payment options available for potential customers that may be anxious to use their smartphone to make a purchase.

After all, watching a video of a girl falling into a fire while twerking in a local coffee shop surrounded by shaggy "novelists" is not an environment that lends itself to safe and secure mobile payment.

Related Resources

Worldwide Ad Growth Buoyed by Digital, Mobile Adoption

Android and iOS Combine for 91.1% of the Worldwide Smartphone OS Market in 4Q12 and 87.6% for the Year, According to IDC

Mobile device market penetration