The keys to good mobile strategy role out of great Engagement Marketing and a clear understanding of our audience’s media and mobile behaviors. Here are some tips to get you on that path to successfully adding lift to your marketing efforts using mobile.

Step 1: Understand your audience’s mobile behaviors

The first step in crafting a good mobile strategy is to understand the profile of your target market’s mobile behavior. Are they mobile intensives, mobile casuals, or mobile restrained?

A study by Insight Express shows that mobile intensives represent about 70% of the rapidly growing smartphone market. Subgroups within the mobile intensive category, like the Millennial generation, techy men (early adopters), and iPhone Moms, have specific behaviors and interests that are important to understand when trying to reach them.

The mobile casual and mobile restrained segments are large, but are shrinking in size as mobile contracts renew and more and more consumers opt for smartphones.  The primary functions used by mobile casuals are the phone, camera and SMS.

Within your target market segment, it is also important to understand what type of device the majority of your audience uses. For example, building an iPhone app to target people working in the financial services sector might seem like a good way to provide a progressive image to your brand in what is often seen as a traditionally staid industry. But a bit of market research will show that this community predominantly uses Blackberries, meaning your brand’s messaging would miss its intended target.

Step 2: Consider the nature of mobile experiences

When planning your mobile strategy, consider the nature of the platform. Mobile activity is most often brief and frequently interrupted, so the KISS principle applies. Too many steps or hurdles in your mobile campaign could result in steep drop-off rates as people’s attention is taken elsewhere by their immediate surroundings. Keep interactions simple and short.

Step 3: Understand the use case and design accordingly.

The primary driver for most mobile interactions is to either kill time or save time. Think about why a user will come to your mobile website, or download your app, and stick to the information that they are looking for in that context. For example, when looking up a restaurant, the user wants to find your location, call for a reservation, and check out your menu. Including the full contents of your main site would make finding key information frustrating and time consuming. When a person is out with friends and deciding on where to eat, it is imperative that you do a good job of answering their questions quickly or they will likely end up across the street at your competitor’s.

Step 4: Making sure that the tactic matches the strategy.

Mobile advertising is great for reach and awareness. Apps generate interest and evaluation.  SMS loyalty programs put incentives in consumer’s pockets to drive foot traffic, purchases and loyalty.  Understanding what stage in the funnel your tactic is addressing will help define your mobile approach. The further down the funnel you are, the lower your overall numbers will be – but each and every one of those engagements is of high value to your business.

Step 5: Define success upfront

Before launching your campaign, define up front what success will look like. Understand how your metrics relate to business outcomes and make sure all your supporting media is optimized to generate the results you are looking for. Running a mobile sweepstakes, for example, is a great way to generate awareness and engagement, but if the contest is not properly promoted in the right channels, you may fail to attract the number of entrants you need to be successful.

Step 6: Plan Holistically

When drawing out your campaign strategy, do not plan mobile as an isolated channel. The success of mobile depends upon support from traditional and digital media that contain compelling, value-added messages that drive consumers to pull out their phones and opt-in for a deeper engagement with your brand.

Keeping behaviors and use cases front and center in your planning process will provide the recipe for success when integrating the proper mobile tools across your marketing mix.