By David Schreffler

With today's mobile market becoming increasingly complicated for businesses to navigate, it is proving a real challenge for marketers to target the correct mobile channels when it comes to connecting with consumers. The accelerating rise in the number of mobile and tablet devices, coupled with the growth of advanced mobile technologies such as NFC, means that that businesses are faced with the intensifying problem of fragmentation in the mobile market.

This is a particularly urgent issue for companies, because mobile interactions are considered by consumers to be more intimate engagements with a brand than on any other marketing platforms. As a result, consumers have more specific preferences as to how a brand communicates with them on their mobile device - whether to convey information, provide offers or deliver services. In order to maintain a competitive edge, businesses therefore have to cater to enduring consumer demands to use certain mobile channels for specific interactions.

To add to the confusion, companies may also find that their target consumers use one mobile channel for a certain type of interaction and another for a different kind of engagement. For example, a user may prefer to browse purchases via a mobile website, but track loyalty program rewards through a brand’s on-device application, whilst receiving coupons or location-based alerts over text message.

Certain demographics may also have strong mobile preferences, for example younger mobile users clearly prefer their brand interaction through apps, whilst older users are more comfortable with accessing mobile internet. In order for companies to deliver an effective multi-channel mobile strategy, they must first determine their engagement goals and then determine where their target audience lies in terms of mobile usage and preferences.

Over the past year, several major brands have maximised the potential of their mobile strategy by creating a mobile offering across several devices, operating systems, and platforms in order to lucratively connect with consumers.

One of the biggest mobile success stories has been eBay, which reported $2 billion in mobile sales in 2010, and claims that three to four Ferraris are bought every month through its mobile applications! eBay has expanded its presence to five major mobile platforms over the past year, leading to a greater adoption of its applications, and also introduced a new channel into its mobile strategy - a dedicated tablet app for the iPad. This multi-channel strategy offered eBay’s extremely diverse population of customers a variety of mobile options, allowing them to use the channel they are most comfortable with, and subsequently enabling eBay to capture the most m-commerce potential.

Another business that has successfully implemented a multi-channel, multi-platform strategy is Fortune 500 company Toyota Motor Sales. Toyota is able to capture the smartphone users who drive the majority of its mobile traffic (85 to 90 percent), simply by being the only auto manufacturer with an app across the top three smartphone systems (Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry). The company also accommodates users with web-enabled, non-touch phones using the company's fully functional mobile website. Toyota’s interactive communications marketing manager, Michael K. Nelson, said about the company's multi-channel strategy, "It is a mandate for all car manufacturers to have a cross-channel mobile presence to reach all possible customers."

Multi-platform, multi-channel mobile strategies are not just essential within the world of retail and manufacturing, however. Global banking firm AXA is a good example of a financial services business that realised that in order to stay competitive, and provide the best service to customers, its mobile offering had to be a more robust, cross-platform solution that enabled full service banking on practically any mobile device. As AXA handles banking on a global scale, it also needed to meet different regulations in each and every country, as well as language and localisation needs. It decided to implement a comprehensive, end-to-end mobile strategy, delivering mobile web and native on-device applications to BlackBerry, Android and iPhone platforms through one solution, meaning that AXA headed off future issues and is able to support more mobile platform rollouts and additional services for new lines of businesses in future releases.

While it seems clear that mobile is an essential part of any company’s customer engagement and marketing strategy, brands are still struggling to leverage the rapidly growing customer demand for mobile services. Recent research commissioned by M-Retailing revealed that of the British retailers it surveyed, 84% agreed that making sure websites are optimised for mobile will be crucial for 2011. However, despite these findings, many retailers have yet to take action, and 35% of retailers have yet to leverage the channel in any form. The survey also worryingly showed that nearly half of the companies surveyed who don’t currently have an app have no plans to launch one.

As demonstrated by eBay, Toyota and AXA’s successful mobile strategies, in order for companies to consistently engage with their customers at every step of their brand experience, it's imperative to design a comprehensive, long-term mobile strategy that addresses existing channels and prepares brands for new channels as mobile technology evolves (for example, tablet technologies and applications.)

As the mobile world becomes more competitive than ever, it is crucial that mobile offerings are correctly designed and effectively implemented from the beginning of the process. Consumers looking for the mobile channel of their choice will more than likely be alienated by mobile strategies that focus on just one channel and one device. Companies can no longer afford to neglect offering their mobile services across a variety of devices and operating systems, and across every available channel, from mobile web to tablet applications, from SMS to desktop gadgets, and native on-device applications.

About the author

David Schreffler is Senior Vice President of Sales at Kony Solutions, and is responsible for building and leading Kony’s worldwide sales and strategic development team. With more than 18 years of experience, David has a unique combination of enterprise, channel, and on-demand/SaaS success with both large and start-up organizations.

About Kony Solutions

Kony provides a suite of products and support services that enable Fortune 500 companies to offer consumers feature-rich mobile applications in less time and at lower costs than any other solution available. Kony’s proprietary Write Once, Run Everywhere single application definition enables mobile offerings to be designed and developed just once, in a device independent manner, and deployed across multiple channels, including on-device applications, mobile web, SMS, Web gadgets, and kiosks. The Kony Mobile Application Platform™ leverages the Write Once, Run Everywhere technology for designing, developing, deploying and managing mobile applications.

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