Remember When a Phone Was Just For Making Phone Calls?

Yesterday, as I prepared to write this article on mobile marketing, I started to keep track of exactly what I used my phone for.

The day started with a check of email, the weather, and local news. Shortly thereafter, the phone was back in use for an exchange of texts between friends I would meet later. At work, I used the Internet radio app to drown out noise, and then at lunch a barcode scanning app to confirm I was getting the best price on a purchase. Whoops! At the counter, I realized there was not enough money in my account to pay for those shoes, so I quickly transferred funds from my savings account to my checking account. Later, more texts were exchanged between my friends and our locale for the evening was moved. Not knowing anything about the spot, or how to get there, I checked out their website, read reviews on a third-party website, and mapped my route to the meet-up spot.

Before heading out to dinner, I paid two bills, checked my Facebook page and sent a Tweet into Twitterville. At dinner, I took pictures of my friends, and then we checked out what movies were playing at the theater next door—and bought our tickets, of course.

As I arrived at home, I realized—I didn't use the phone as a telephone all day.

Welcome to the World of the Smartphone.

As this insightful article from Mobile Marketer notes, mobile marketing has well surpassed just text, display and search. Mobile now covers social (the fastest-growing activity), gaming, banking, shopping, etc. Statistics note that almost 25% of the time spent accessing the Internet is done via mobile devices. Morgan Stanley recently released a study that predicts that phone Internet usage will surpass computer usage as early as 2012. This all begs the question—can you afford not to be in the mobile game?

If you're not already there, the Mobile Marketer article has five easy tips for how to start the process—the most important one being 'don't be afraid to fail.' As with any new media platform, best practices and right vs. wrong are fuzzy right now. What works for your competitor might not work for you. As mobile changes and grows, so too must you, to fit within the platform and to provide your customers with what they want. Not sure what that is? Ask them—and use your common sense. One in three searches on a mobile phone are locally driven—that is, the user is looking for something in their vicinity. When they search, your starting point is to be there and to be user-friendly.