In my book ‘Mobile Magic’, a go-to guide for marketers starting out in mobile, I end nearly each chapter with ‘Five Things To Do Right Now’. These are simple tasks that you can do from the comfort of your own mobile device. Here are my five for marketers who need that extra push to get started.

 

1. Make someone in your organisation the ‘Mobile God’.

Every organisation has at least one person that has the latest apps, phones, cool stuff on and around mobile. Make it part of their job, have them report back to the teams frequently and give them a little budget to play around with – $100 here or there goes a long way on the app stores!

 

2. Become the biggest consumer of everything mobile related to your business.

There is no excuse for anyone in business to not be up to date on what’s happening in his or her sector around mobile. Subscribe to news feeds on Storify and Pulse, download every app that’s remotely connected to the kind of business that you do, and learn everything about your phone. It’s inexcusable, so get started.

 

3. Ask yourself “is this really, truly a mobile idea?”

When your creative or marketing teams are presenting ideas for mobile, question whether it’s actually a mobile idea. Does it live natively on mobile? Is it useful? Is it simple? Don’t waste time or money on overcomplicating people’s lives and squandering your budget. Be mobile and mean it.

 

4. Immediately prioritise mobile in your marketing and technical budgets.

The recent report from Millward Brown 2014 around mobile states that “Americans consume 151 mins on a smartphone daily and 147 mins on TV time. China is 170 mins on a smartphone daily, with nearly double TV time. Regardless of whether everyone is doing it, you need to be prepared. Plan, test and learn.

 

5. Start. If you’ve started, do more.

Your customers are moving in one direction and have one screen they are connected to more than any other. In a short time, a generation will be connected to nothing but mobile devices.

 

To finish off, here are two rules I recommend we live by:

“Surprise your audience with the blindingly simple” and “great technology
is no excuse for a bad idea”.