Michael: So, Kim, why don’t you give my listeners a layman’s definition of what is mobile marketing? What do you mean by mobile?

Kim: Well, mobile marketing is simply businesses connecting with their customers via their mobile phones. It can be through any number of technologies – the mobile web, text messaging, actually calling, Bluetooth, mobile advertising. It can be really any of those technologies, but the important part about mobile marketing being done successfully, and I wrap it right into my definition is that all of this needs to happen at the right time and the right place with the right message, and it always requires the customer’s explicit permission and/or acts of interaction. The reason I put that right into my definition and when I’m setting the groundwork is because a lot of people get afraid that mobile marketing – as a consumer, they mean, “Oh, I’m going to get spammed on my phone. It’s going to be like the days when email opened up and all of a sudden, the floodgates were open.”

Michael: So, when you say mobile phones, so, we’re not talking about GPS systems, which are doing a lot. We’re not talking about PDAs which are like mini-computers or mobile laptops which access the internet wirelessly. We’re predominately talking about the mobile phone.

Kim: Well, no, not necessarily. I would say no we’re not talking about laptops, full sized computer laptops because while, those are mobile, the usage tends to fall in line with what people are doing if they’re on a full size computer. Yes, it can mean GPS. It can mean Playstations that have access. Primarily, it means mobile phones, but it can mean all of those with the exception of text messaging. I think that’s really pretty much unique to phones.

Michael: How about the Apple iTouch?

Kim: ITouch would be included in there. That’s for sure a mobile device.

Michael: Do you know much about the GPS devices? I don’t know much about them, and I don’t have one. These are the ones specifically that you put in your car. I think they’re doing some pretty fancy things, aren’t they?

Kim: They are, and I think that we’ll see a lot more of that as well, absolutely. You’re going to see mobile marketing on those really coming to fruition. I don’t have one, no, so I’m not speaking from personal experience, but it makes total sense. If people are looking for something that it might be offer a coupon, and they drive by somewhere, or as they’re driving to some location, a nearby store, offer a coupon. So, yes, I think we’ll definitely see a lot of mobile marketing come into play there.

Michael: So, Kim, how did you even fall into this whole mobile marketing thing? Tell me your story.

Kim: Well, I was running a book marketing firm for about twelve years, and based on a few things that happened in my business partner’s life and mine, we decided we didn’t want to continue doing that anymore.

Michael: What were you doing book marketing? What does that mean?

Kim: We helped authors and publishers market their books. So, we would get publicity for them, help them get websites developed, really everything around getting their books out there into the public. When I decided I didn’t really want to do that anymore, I started looking at what were the opportunities around, and I started looking at mobile and decided that I should learn about it. It seemed like a really good possibility. So, I would go online. I would try to find things. I assumed it would be like internet where I just come across several ebooks and courses and seminars and tapes. I really didn’t find it. So, I started just piecing things together, and I started taking notes and, “Okay, this goes here and that goes there, and this is the player over here,” and piecing it all together. Then, I realized, “Oh my gosh, if I had this much trouble, everyone else is as well. Everyone else is as confused and not getting this all pulled together in a nice step by step package or way to do it even.” So, because I came from the book world, I realized that it would be a good model for a book. So, I approached a publisher that I knew and asked him I could write a book, and they said, “Sure.” So, I wrote and published the definitive guide on Mobile Marketing which I now include with all of my training products and so I figured out a way to tell people how to navigate the landscape of mobile.

Michael: That took you a lot of research?

Kim: I basically worked full time for ten months on learning, doing the seminars, reading every single white paper I could find. I interviewed executives and sales people, and every vendor, every possibility, but it took me ten months to write and investigate and put this training together.. So, yes, it was not a light process.

Michael: So, anyone who gets your action plan and your product is really getting ten months of your work and all your interviews and the resources that took you that long to put together.

Kim: Absolutely.

Michael: Why should I be listening to you right now? Why does mobile marketing matter to me right now?

Kim: I love that question – because four billion of the world’s six billion population have a mobile phone. So, really, there is no other mass media that is as prevalent in the world situation. It’s one of the things that pretty much everybody has besides babies and extremely elderly folks, have mobile phones. It really can not be ignored. Whether or not you – if you’ve got a website and doing any sort of social marketing or social networking, the chances are that almost everyday someone’s coming to your site via their mobile phone. They may not be getting a very pleasant experience because you may not be paying attention to it yet. It’s just such a big group of people that are participating that you really can not ignore.

Michael: Now, does the data suggest that the growth of mobile phone usage just blows away anything else out there compared to TV and other mediums?

Kim: Oh, absolutely. It’s off the charts. There’s nothing else that that many people have. Even if you look at email, there’s 1.3 billion people who use email, and internet users, there’s about 1.4 billion. TV sets, 1.5, oh, even credit cards, if you look at credit cards, there’s less than two billion people that have credit cards. So, it’s just worth it completely.

Michael: It seems like what we’re talking about is we’re talking about the personal computer shrunken down into a handset that also allows you to talk on the phone. I just bought my little toy phone, my Blackberry Storm, touch screen. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned on it. Just having one of these is just a huge learning experience. My wife was joking with me, “Oh, you’re going to be like your brother, always on his phone, always on his phone.” I said, “No, I’m going to get addicted to my Crackberry,” but I was wrong.

Kim: Yes, once you’ve experienced all of the various things that you can do with it, then consumers tend to say, “Okay, what’s next? What else can happen?” That’s the exciting part for businesses is that as consumers start using their phones more, start upping their data plans, getting the text message plans because a lot of people get it because they want to communicate with their kids easier, whatever brings them in. The important thing is once they’re going, now they want more. What else can happen? What else can I do? If your company steps in with what that is, providing the value to people, it can be so rewarding.

Michael: Do you think with the numbers what you’re seeing for the demand for mobile devices, it would be bigger than maybe the gold rush days of the internet, the very beginning of the internet?

Kim: Another great question – I think what we have here is, yes, as internet marketers, we have the knowledge to say, “Wow, this is how it transpired. Here’s how the whole thing sort of went with the internet and the folks who jumped in early, who started building their lists, who started developing their web presence, yeah they raked it in. They really did a gangbuster business.” The opportunity for mobile is like that right now because the internet marketers aren’t really onboard yet. They’re still trying to figure it out. They’re maybe trying to do some tests or maybe, who should I use for something? It’s bit of a level playing field right now as well because if the big gurus aren’t doing it, we certainly can jump in and do it ourselves. So, yes, I think there’s huge potential.

Michael: I’m 44. I don’t know how old you are, but we know that if you have kids or text messaging, tell me what is the attraction of text messaging and how huge is it?

Kim: For the record, I’m 43. So, yes, I’m another gen-Xer. Text messaging is really big, and that’s one of the things that a lot of folks sort of do when they talk about texting is that right away teens come to mind with texting, and yes that is true that teens use a lot of texting but so do almost everyone in every range. When you get 55 and over, then it starts to equal out. The numbers of text messages versus phone calls, we all in that range, even lower, do more text messaging than make phone calls, the sheer number of messages versus calls. The appeal of it as a business or a marketer is that you can connect with someone on the device that they carry with them everywhere. People sleep with them. They take them into meetings. They have them with them at all times, and yes, they turn them off occasionally, but even so when a text comes in, people read it. The open rates on text messages are 90-some percent because people just read them. They don’t let them sit there like an email.

Michael: Explain for someone who has never seen a mobile device that allows you to send a text – describe for that layman how does one send a text message, just generally.

Kim: It’s a little different on each phone, but how it would work is you would open up your messaging center or your text area. They’ll name it something different, and then you would essentially type in – if it’s a person to person text message, you would type in their phone number. That’s who you’re sending the message to. It’s sort of like sending an email with your phone, that kind of concept. Then, you type in a message. You’ve got 160 characters. That’s the maximum length of a text message, and so you type it in. Hopefully, you have a full keyboard on your phone when you start to do this because if you don’t, you’re going to be a little crazy because otherwise you’re typing out with the number. You type the message and hit send and it goes directly to that phone.

Michael: Is it because one can communicate without the phone ringing, without getting into one on one voice to voice conversation, that this is just becoming such a huge way of communicating?

Kim: Yes, absolutely, and it’s an easy way to get a quick message across. My husband is in sales, and so I never know if he’s in a meeting with someone at a given time. So, if I’m calling him during the day, the chances are that I’m going to interrupt him at a time when it’s not really the best time. So, if I need something or I want to tell him what’s going on with dinner or something about our daughter, I’ll just text him because then if he’s not busy, he can call me back if he wants to, but if he is, he just gets it and it’s done and communicated, but it’s simple.

Michael: It’s kind of like email, but more direct and easier to do.

Kim: Right.

Michael: So, give me an example how some very large promotional companies or TV shows or what have you are using text messaging to make money.

Kim: Well, one of the biggest money makers in mobile, and actually one of the really great examples is American Idol, and how people can text in to vote for who they want to win. This is an example of the premium text messaging campaign. So, what they do is people that vote pay a certain amount to place their vote via text messaging, and so it’s actually a money maker for them because every time someone texts they earn money. You’re listening to an exclusive interview found on Michael Senoff’s HardToFindSeminars.com.

Michael: So, tell me how that would work. Let’s say I’m the guy who owned American Idol rather than Simon. How am I going to set this promotion up, and how does the money exchange hands from the person who does the vote to me the owner of American Idol getting my money? How does that work?

Kim: Well, something of that scale, they’re working with very large text messaging companies, aggregators. They have their own short code, and what they do is they have to get their short code and this whole concept-

Michael: What’s a short code?

Kim: A short code is the number that you text into. In this example, the word “tacos” to 12345, the 12345 is the short code, and so a company would work with a large aggregator that would help you provision the short code. You actually lease that number. Then, they would make arrangements with the carriers to get the whole process approved, and then the carriers actually do the billing. So, the money is paid from the person voting on their phone bill, and then from the phone bill, the phone companies – the Sprints and the Verizons and AT&Ts of the world and T-Mobiles – pull that out and send it along to the company who started the campaign minus their piece of it. So, the carriers take a percentage of all that money that comes in as well.

Michael: Do you know how much money American Idol was able to generate through these votings?

Kim: I don’t know, but it’s in the billions, I’m sure, millions and billions. It’s a big number.

Michael: So, American Idol promoting that thing, I’m wondering, is this one of the revenue models that they used to make money?

Kim: Absolutely.

Michael: What percentage would me the owner of American Idol make, and can I set my own price? So, can I say, “Okay, everyone who votes is going to pay a dollar when they make a vote?” What percentage would I get as the company compared to the phone company? Are there good margins?

Kim: No, there are not good margins. I believe it’s like 60/40, maybe you get 40, probably American Idol being so big could maybe negotiate something else. The premium market is really not necessarily the best way I would advocate for people to jump in as a money making model. It’s so complicated, and the carriers have approval, and there’s just so much oversight and then customers can complain and say, “I didn’t really mean this,” and then get it reversed off their bill. It’s quite complicated. So, yes, the person listening that’s not necessarily likely to be their best model.

Michael: Right, I’m just trying to get some ideas of how mobile marketing is being used out there that people can relate to. I can relate to that because there probably is a lot of customer service. I was on the phone with my Sprint carrier because we had a problem with the bill. That does make sense. I’m sure there’s a lot of people who don’t want to pay that payment, and they may want the charge reversed or whatever. There’s probably a lot of labor involved in that.

Kim: Absolutely. I can give another example, and it’s actually a great example of a mobile coupon. Red Box – they do the movies that are like outside of McDonalds, Wal-mart, it’s the big red kiosk.

Michael: Okay, yes.

Kim: They have a free movie Monday, and this came to mind because today happens to be Monday, and I just got my free Monday coupon on my phone. What you do is you go to RedBox.com on your regular computer, and there’s a spot to sign up. It says, “Get a free rental,” or something like that. When you go to that page, what you can do is sign up to get an email, and they’ll email you a coupon which then of course, if you want to use, you have to remember to write down the code or print that email out or whatever, and then remember to take it with you when you go, or you can sign up to have it sent directly to your phone. Now, what’s great about this is now I don’t have to remember. I remember my phone anyway. I don’t go anywhere without it. So, on any given Monday, I always have that coupon with me because they send it to me regularly on Monday. This is free movie, and granted it’s only a dollar. I mean, it only costs a dollar to rent a movie there, but it’s the excitement of it. Hey, it’s free movie Monday. All summer long last year, every Monday, it was like, “Oh, it’s our free movie,” and then what happened was it changed our habits. We used to go to one of the other movie places. We’d walk in and stuff, and I got so used to going there on Mondays for my free movie that I started going there on the weekends when we were willing to pay and get more than one movie. The other thing that I liked about it is that it’s a great example of how the coupon can work and how much a business can put into a coupon, and they do a really nice job of making sure it’s customer friendly. So, I think it’s a really good thing to sign up for, just to see how it works.

Michael: I just signed up, and I heard my phone vibrate, and I think I’ve got the coupon. That’s funny. My wife was just in Vaughn’s, we have a big Vaughn’s right here, and she goes, “Hey, did you know you can rent a movie at Vaughn’s for a dollar each?” I thought about it, and I’ve seen that Red Box, and I never knew what the name of the company was. Now, I’m making the connection.

Kim: Now, you’re going to get a free movie every Monday.

Michael: Okay, so I signed up, and that’s going to come as what – an email or a SMS text or what?

Kim: If you signed up on the site that said, “Put your email in,” then you’ll get an email. If you signed up where you put in your phone number and hit submit and you wanted to SMS, then you’ll get a SMS message. You’ll get one every Monday with a free movie. If you want to stop, you can just reply to stop, and they’ll stop coming.

Michael: Now, I don’t text, and I told my carrier I don’t want any text packages. So, if I signed up on the text option and they sent me a text, do people pay for an incoming text?

Kim: Yes, right now, you will. You will pay for a text. It’ll probably be about twenty cents a text. So, if you don’t want to get those, then you probably got a confirmation or something like that. I would go ahead and turn that off because now you’re kind of paying twenty cents to get a dollar. So, it may or may not make sense to you. Honestly, just turn on a text package, get with the program.

Michael: Yes, they’re not that much. I think for 200 texts, it’s only five bucks.

Kim: Yes, exactly. I’m on Sprint, and I think it’s 300 for five bucks. So, it’s really not a big deal, and if you’re going to be doing anything in mobile, you’re going to want the texting.

Michael: Okay, so you sound convinced that texting is where it’s at. Give me another example of how texting is used in marketing other than the Red Box.

Kim: There’s a company that I interviewed the other day called Jittergram. They’re a mobile coupon company. What they do is they help businesses and consumers. Businesses give out mobile coupons, and the consumers find them. So, they sort of service those ends. He was giving an example of a restaurant that they worked with who had just gotten started with this, and what they did is they had started to get consumers signing up to get alerts from them. So, it’s all permission based. So, it would be customers sitting in their restaurants who said, “I want to know when you have a special.” So, they signed up, and they had just started. So, they only had a small list. They had about sixty names on their list, but they were having a really slow night. There happened to be a snowstorm, and they were slow. Well, of course, they got the same staff as if it’s going to be a busy night, and so what they did is they went ahead and sent out a coupon via Jittergram. They call it a Jet. So, they went ahead and sent one out, and sixteen people came in for dinner.

Michael: Because people had gone to Jittergram in that geographical area and requested information for special deals with restaurants.

Kim: Right, or they were already customers of that restaurant, and from being at the restaurant had signed up, so either way, yes. People had agreed to get a text message from that particular restaurant, and so they went from having a night where there may have been no tables to at least having sixteen folks in the door, and it cost them pennies for that sort of marketing. What it did was imagine if they had a slow night before texting, even an email is not really quick enough because unless someone happens to be checking their email right then or whatever, they probably sent this out when folks were driving home or still out and about, and I don’t know what the offer was, but 50% off or buy one get one free or whatever it was. It brought people indoor that night when they needed the business.

Michael: Yes, I’m starting to see the power of texting. Texting is right now because people are checking their texts all the time. Email used to be right now, but email could be not until tomorrow.

Kim: Right, exactly.

Michael: I’m also seeing an advantage in texting because it does cost them money to receive texts, I think it may be a cleaner medium compared to email with all the junk because it’s free to send email. Would you agree?

Kim: I agree, yes, because businesses have to pay to do the se texts. They have to work with a company that will send them out for them or whatever, whether it’s Jittergram or they work with another company and set up their own campaign, but yes, it does. It keeps it cleaner, and then people are interested. They don’t sign up if they don’t want it. I want to get a free movie every Monday, so I’m happy to get that text.

Michael: We’re hearing a lot about social media, and we’re seeing, I know on my Verizon Storm, I have applications for Facebook, for MySpace, and I believe there’s Twitterberry applications for Twitter. How is social media in mobile marketing intertwined?

Kim: Well, exactly that, people are involved in social networking. Facebook is growing by 600,000 visitors a day or whatever it is, and what’s happening is they’re realizing that it’s not only when they’re sitting at their computer that they want to have access to these networks of people. So, what they do is they go on their phones. It’s starting to be built in. They’re figuring it out. They’re going to the mobile web to interact. It’s almost like they’re just hand in hand. People that do social networking are just going to be doing it via mobile more and more all the time, which leads people to do more web visits, interact via text more. Once you start realizing that Twitter is like text messaging in a way, it’s like that kind of similar feel, similar sort of character count, and then you can reach people. It just puts people in a different mindset. So, they’re building one upon the other. The more that people can access the social networks via mobile, the more they’re using them versus desktop because it just integrates these networks in people’s lives more and more.

Michael: And, like being listed in the Google business listings, being able to be found on Twitter and on Facebook and MySpace is important for any business selling a product or service, too.

Kim: Right, absolutely.

Michael: Okay, so why don’t we talk about the myth, mobile marketing is spam. I’m sure a lot of people are concerned about that. Is it spam?

Kim: It should not be spam if businesses are doing it correctly. Now, does that mean some people will do it incorrectly? Absolutely, and really the spam portion is all around texting because if you go on the mobile web, it’s not spam because it’s like going on the internet. You log on. If there’s an ad there, you’re used to seeing an ad because that’s what we are used to on the internet. So, it really is all around texting. If you do get something that you did not want, then you just tell your carrier, or hit reply stop, and they’ll hunt them down via that number, the short code, and they’ll turn it off. So, they can do that. The cell phone companies can say, “Anything coming from this number to our phones does not get through.” So, there are ways to shut it down, but aside from the spammers, the real legitimate businesses who are using it, what they have to do in order to get you going is you have to agree, like you just did with Red Box. You go to a website, sign up, or you have to text in. So, you have to text number and agree that you want to get it, so it really should be all around the customer experience. Business should not want to ever want to send anything to people who did not specifically request it.

Michael: Yes, it’s opt-in. Okay, so, I’m thinking about getting into mobile marketing, using text and Jittergram as a way to promote my product or service. I’m not real sure, and I’m thinking, “Well, look what happened to email. It’s almost impossible to stop the spam from flooding your inbox.” Do you think from your expertise that this could happen as people pick up on this, that text messaging can be abused, or are they going to have better controls on it than they did with email?

Kim: They already have better controls, and it comes right through the carriers because any time customers sign up for something, it has to go through the carrier. For you to get a text message, it has to go through Sprint. If you say, “Hey, I’m getting spam texting from this particular short code,” Sprint can do what they call an audit and they can make the company that provides that code look at that and say, “Yes, this was or wasn’t spam.” Then, they can just shut it off. So, companies have to pay attention to this because if they don’t, a carrier will shut it off. If you’re doing something and all of a sudden none of your Sprints are going through, none of your T-mobiles are going through, and then all of a sudden, none of your AT&Ts are going through, they just shut you off. So, it should not turn into the way that it did with spam email.

Michael: What about that myth, no one wants to be bothered on their cell phone? Is that true?

Kim: That’s absolutely true. No one does want to be bothered. They don’t want to be marketed to. What they do want is to be provided value. So, in Red Box’s mind, I’ll just keep using them as an example, or even in this restaurant’s example, what they’re doing is marketing. They’re saying, “Hey, here’s something,” whatever. As a customer, I see it is as, “Hey, I got my free movie,” or, “Hey, look at this, the restaurant that I really like is having a sale.” I don’t think of it as an interruption because I specifically signed up for it. It provides something to me as a consumer that I really want, and so no, it’s not marketing when you do it right. The consumer doesn’t think of it as marketing. If you do it wrong, then yes, it’s bothering, and yes, it’s not going to work. So, if that restaurant all of a sudden starting sending out texts about, “Hey, come buy a lawnmower from us,” something completely not relevant, not related, then, yes, that would be bothersome. I wouldn’t want it. If Red Box started sending me on Thursdays, “Hey, by the way, this movie just came out today, I just thought you’d like to know about it.” I wouldn’t like that because that’s not what I signed up for.

Michael: Okay, give me another cool example of how someone else or a website is using mobile market as a revenue model. This Jittergram is great, and Red Box is a great example. How about another example?

Kim: I’d like to branch out a little bit from text messaging.

Michael: Yes, let’s do it. Let’s branch out, absolutely.

Kim: Well, there’s certainly the mobile web, which a lot of folks say, “Well, how is the mobile web different than just the regular web?”

Michael: Describe what the mobile web is.

Kim: The mobile web would be at any point someone going onto the internet, with their mobile device, and the reason that it’s different than just the internet is that with that mobile device, the monitor you’ll notice just really quickly is a lot smaller than your desktop monitor. My monitor is 17 inches across, but my cell phone on my Trio I’ve got a good two inches. It’s quite different. Additionally, I can’t grab the very biggest websites. I’ve literally gone on to websites on my phone that crash my phone, and then I have to pull the battery out, restart my phone completely just to get my phone back functional. It’s kind of like a watermelon going through a garden hose kind of a thing. So, the idea that a business needs to have their website accessible, mobile friendly, if you will, because you never know when someone is coming at your site with a garden hose, and you’re sitting there with your site that’s a watermelon. So, the way that businesses are generating revenue and getting people to their businesses, etc, is by having a site that actually works well on mobile with the things that people really want on mobile. So, let’s say that I’m trying to find a business. This happened to me exactly the other day. I was in an airport, on my phone. I was looking up Twitter. I’m on Twitter, and someone had sent me – there was a link in there, and I wanted to see what it was. I clicked to it. Right away, the Internet Explorer on my phone pops open. I go to this site, and lo and behold this particular site worked okay on my phone, some of them don’t, and I was able to read their sales letter and get right to the bottom. I really could have made a purchase right there. It was something that I didn’t necessarily decide I wanted, but had I wanted to, I could have hit the buy button and plugged in my credit card on my phone and purchased what they had there.

Michael: Were they mobile ready?

Kim: They were mobile ready.

Michael: So, they planned for this.

Kim: I have a feeling that their site was quite simple. It was a basic sales letter, and it just happened to translate well and work okay, but it was all right. There are definitely ways to make sure you plan for it.

Michael: Okay, so we know people are using mobile devices to talk on the phone. We know the huge demand with text. Is there a demand – are people with the tiny monitors and screens on their phones, are they using them to surf the web, to go to websites?

Kim: Yes, according to Nielsen – they’re the folks who do the data research on television. They also have a mobile division, and I heard them speak recently, and they were putting some statistics. These are US figures, so of the 272 million folks in the United States who have mobile phones, they’re saying that 43 million of them are active mobile web users. So, it’s much less than text messaging, but it’s growing everyday. So, more and more people everyday are jumping on. So, yeah, it’s still early days. There’s still time to be an early adapter in the mobile web.

Michael: I think that’s great. Tell me what dot-mobi is.

Kim: Well, dot-mobi is just another domain name like dot-com, dot-org, dot- whatever, but what it does is it helps designate your site as specifically a mobile site, and it’s – I don’t want to say controversial, but there are two schools of thought around it. Some folks say that you don’t really need to have a dot-mobi. What you do is you just have your main domain, and then let people just type that in and then your server through the code, the user agent code that you would put on there would direct people to the right information, and that you wouldn’t necessarily use a different domain.

Michael: So, let’s say I’m on my device, and I go to HardToFindSeminars.com that if I’m on the device, the server will know I’m on a mobile device, and it’ll direct me?

Kim: Yes, there are pieces of code that you can use, and I don’t have them right at my fingertips, but if you Google like “mobile device detection user agent code,” or something like that, it’s a fairly simple code that you plug in on your site, and then it will direct those based on what browser they’re coming from.

Michael: So, it’ll direct them to what? A special format of my website that’s ready for mobile, or will it automatically convert my site for mobile?

Kim: Well, it can do either. There’s both options. My thinking is that people want something slightly different on mobile than they do on the big.

Michael: Yeah, you’re going to have to have it different for it to work.

Kim: Yes, so in essence you would build a second site, and it’s a pain. This is a big deal to think about this. Are you building a second site? What are you doing? But, you could build a second site that’s completely around mobile, and then it works.

Michael: Who are some big players that have dot-mobi sites?

Kim: ESPN.mobi is a big mobile site. Zagit – the food folks, their food reviews, they have a mobi site. A company that’s doing a really great job with mobile and the two different kind of sites is Cars.com. In their Superbowl commercial, they had a guy sitting on a phone bringing up the mobile site, and he just typed in Cars.com, and it brought up the mobile site. So, it’s a good example of if you go on your desktop, you see something so much more robust. If you go on your mobile browser, you see specifically what you’re likely to need.

Michael: I just typed in ESPN.mobi, and you can see how it’s laid out. It’s so much more simple, and I can see how this would fit shrunken down on a mobile phone. It’s very interesting to compare.

Kim: Yes, and they have said that at times, their mobile site gets more views than their desktop site.

Michael: So, this dot-mobi, are there people scrambling to go buy dot-mobi extensions and try to profit?

Kim: Yes, they are, and it’s not working as well.

Michael: Why is that?

Kim: Because, like I was just saying, they’re not really going into the mobi space. Remember I was saying there’s two schools of thought. Some folks don’t go with the dot-mobi at all. They’ll maybe make a subdomain m.something.com, and put it under there. So, there’s some options there. So, people do not have to have a dot-mobi. What’s that’s done is it’s kind of undercut that whole claim staking of domain names. It’s not working quite as robustly as it did in the internet.

Michael: So, we’re talking how do we make money, and how do we market through mobile? What you’re talking about is if you have an internet web presence, there are people who have these devices who want to go online, and if you have a website and you’re marketing or selling a product or service, you want that site optimized for mobile users. Otherwise, they can’t access your information while they’re with their mobile phone. Can you give any resources of experts or companies who can design these websites? Is it costly? Is it realistic? Is it something someone can do on their own?

Kim: You can use free mobile site builders. There are some of those that you can build a mobile site very quickly for free. MoFuse.com is one. WinkSites.com is another. Mippin.com is another. So, that’s a way to sort of dive in, take a look, get your feet wet, see what it is. It’s a free service. That would work well for not certainly a corporate or enterprise level solution. The bigger folks, there are companies that you can use like Crisp Wireless or Eyeloop Mobile. Those would be in the minimum ten to fifty thousand dollars is what they charge for corporate sites. You’ll find that web developers, some will say they can do mobile sites. If you’re going to hire a web developer, I would say ask them to see their mobile sites, and then look at them on your mobile phone before you hire them. A lot of folks will say they have the experience, but they don’t. So, check into that before you dive in. Just like when the internet started, there was a quite range of pricing. It used to be very expensive, and companies would charge tens of thousands of dollars, and now pretty much anybody can start a WordPress blog site for free. So, we’re in the early days where there’s a wide range of things.

Michael: I’m sure WordPress is going to get in on the mobile.

Kim: There are WordPress plug-ins that are set for mobile. So, actually a blog is the easiest thing to mobilize. There’s a WordPress plug-in. Just search for “WordPress mobile plug-ins,” and it’s literally so simple to set it up, that it will automatically make it work. It’s via plug-in so it’s really simple. WordPress sites have the very best of both worlds already. It makes it really easy.

Michael: Okay, this is awesome. Let’s talk about some ways to use mobile marketing to make some money or build my business. You’ve got a lot of different examples, and we can highlight some of these bullets. How about you have here, build a text message list and send mobile coupons to bring customers in the door? So, maybe you can use the Red Box example. I went to their website, and so anyone who has a website could do what to do this?

Kim: Well, you would need to sign up with a text messaging vendor, because the one to one, you just type stuff in on your own phone, but kind of like if you’re doing an email campaign you need a company like aWebber. So, there are text messaging companies that are like that.

Michael: Tell me the most reliable and the best one you’d recommend.

Kim: Well, there’s so many. Texting Forward is a great company. Mobivity, I2SMS – there are really a lot of good ones out there. For more exclusive interviews on business, marketing, advertising and copywriting, go to Michael Senoff’s

Michael: So, this is the equivalent of like an aWebber autoresponder service, but for text messaging.

Kim: Exactly.

Michael: You can go in and manage your list and everything.

Kim: Yes.

Michael: Wow, that is great! Okay, sign up with one of these vendors. Do they charge a monthly fee or per sent usage or something?

Kim: There’s both. There’s a monthly fee usually, and there, yes per message. Yes, you do have to pay for text messages because the cell phone companies charge. There are free options as well, but they put ads on the bottom. So, if you’re using it for a commercial purpose, you’re sort of defeating the purpose by using a free service with an add built in.

Michael: Okay, so I sign up with a service like that, and then I want to start creating a promotion. I’ll put a form on my website just like Red Box had and gives people a chance to opt-in and request information via text messaging.

Kim: Right.

Michael: It’s very similar to again, autoresponder or aWebber, right? Kim; Right, and yes, the text messaging companies are all a little bit different. They all have slightly different services – what they offer, what you can do. Some have voting and polls. Some don’t. Some have ways you can set up an autoresponder. Mobi Reply is a really great company that’s coming out that’s got a mobile autoresponder. So, you can set it up literally, just plug stuff in. It’ll go out automatically. That’s a pretty unique service. So, what I do in part of my teachings is I help people figure out what’s the best text company for them.

Michael: Here, you have create and sell an iPhone application in the iTunes App store. I’ve heard about this that there’s a lot of people creating applications for the – is it for the iPhone?

Kim: Yes.

Michael: Tell me about this.

Kim: Well, iPhones and iTouches, the users of those can purchase or download free either one, applications on their phones. The developers who make these, it’s kind of like starting a software. You build your application, and you can sell it in the iStore, and they keep a percentage of the profits, and you can keep a percentage. It’s a great way to do it. It was kind of a bit of a gold rush early on because there was hardly anybody who had any of them. So, the people who had iPhones were just buying whatever apps were there because they had this great phone and nothing they could do with it. So, people were buying tens of thousands of dollars a day. It’s kind of come down a bit from that. It’s a little bit more realistic, but it’s still an open opportunity for people to develop something that people would want to use on their phones and then sell it through the iTunes app store.

Michael: Here something, be available and make sure that your mobile searches will find you. Are there specific search engines that if I take and offer all my interviews on a dot-mobi extension or for mobile visitors? Do I have to pay attention to the SEO in a different manner?

Kim: Yes, you absolutely do have to pay attention in a different manner, but the good news is it’s not necessarily a different players. Google is still – even on mobile, they are the biggest search engine on mobile, but they want to serve up mobile sites to their mobile visitors. So, in essence, it’s almost like Google mobile is different. They serve up different results if someone is on a mobile phone than if they do if they’re on a desktop. They do that because if they just served up desktop sites, then people would be frustrated because as you know Google’s model is make the customer happy doing search. So, there is a whole model around mobile SEO. There’s things you have to pay attention to like making sure you have a mobile site that works on mobile phones is the number one thing because otherwise they will serve you up when someone is searching on the mobile.

Michael: Wow, I mean, for marketers like myself because I can see how mobile is going to be huge. Everyone is going to be searching the internet through mobile, and if you can position yourself, you could be in the top of your little niche.

Kim: Exactly, and it’s even more important to be at the top on a mobile device because on the desktop, the first page is ten, and then maybe people look on the second page. On a mobile device, there’s maybe two or three listings. So, it’s really important to pay attention to it.

Michael: I have to ask you. Are you in the search engines on the Google mobile yet?

Kim: I haven’t looked for myself. I’ve been so busy making sure I teach everyone else how to do it, I don’t know if my site is or not. I have a mobilized version of my site. My site is a WordPress blog, so I definitely have the mobile presence.

Michael: Great. So, from one you know to get within the search engines on Google Mobile, like would having a WordPress blog qualify you to be in the results of Google, or do I have to have specific code on there so Google when it spiders knows I’m a mobile site. Any tips on that?

Kim: Well, if you use the WordPress plug-in, that is the code. So, yeah, that’s definitely part of it.

Michael: Very good. That’s fascinating. You talk about using popular tools for presence like Google Maps. Tell me what you mean by that. How is that going to help me?

Kim: This is especially important if you’re a brick and mortar and you have a location. It may not be as important for internet marketers who aren’t trying to get people to a location, but one of the things that a lot of people search for is location based things. It kind of makes sense. If they’re out and about and need something, they’re searching for it. How do I get to this place? Or, I’m looking for this particular type of restaurant in this area. So, having a listing in the Google Business listings, and Google displays those top, just like they do on the desktops. So, by having yourself listed there, it will help you show up because Google will display their own stuff first.

Michael: So, I could be a seafood restaurant here in San Diego, and there’s people driving around looking for seafood restaurants in San Diego, and if I’m not registered with Google as a physical seafood restaurant, I’m not going to show up.

Kim: Right.

Michael: I can be an existing restaurant but have never done that, and I could e missing out on potential demand.

Kim: Absolutely.

Michael: Okay, so any brick or mortar business listening right now in any location that has a business like that, how could they make sure that they’re going to show up on that Google Map?

Kim: Go to Google and type in “Business listing,” like search for business listing, and it will give you the URL. You literally just sign up and put yourself in. It’s free. You type in your name, your address, your hours, any business that has a physical presence is just throwing money in the street if they don’t do that.

Michael: Kim, that’s powerful, that one simple thing because if you’re not in there, no one is going to find you. Include mobile response capability and print in other ads, are we talking about in our print advertising, in other marketing efforts to let people know that we’re available mobile?

Kim: What this means is that mobile is the perfect direct response mechanism? If someone is reading an ad, or they’re driving by a billboard, or they’re standing on the street corner with a poster there trying to get people to come to a show or whatever, a band is doing a gig and they want people there, almost everybody that’s driving by or walking by or standing there at the bus stop, they have their phone with them. If you tell them to interact with you at that moment instead of making the call to action something that they’re going to have to remember to do later, that’s part of the power of mobile. It just makes it a direct response. It just can turn anything into you’re actually getting people signed up taking action because they can right then.

Michael: I remember when I first got my phone, and then we have SMS. Describe what is SMS, and how is that different from texting, and can we use SMS in marketing?

Kim: SMS is text messaging.

Michael: Oh, SMS is texting. I got you.

Kim: SMS is short message service.

Michael: Short message service, so you have here, SMS teaser ads can help people discover your mobile capabilities.

Kim: So, this would be once you’ve got people signed up to get messages from you. You can say, “Hey, we have a mobile website now.” Send it out via text so then they know, “Oh, click through and see their whole site.” So, a text message, you only have 160 characters, but you can put a lot more on a mobile site.

Michael: Got you, and this crosses over into giving them an incentive creating a loyalty program available exclusively for people on your mobile list.

Kim: Right. One of the things that Texting Forward can do – I mentioned them, they can do a whole loyalty program so, like I have a friend who has a sandwich shop, and they are starting a loyalty program where you buy ten sandwiches, you get your eleventh free. Well, instead of having the little business cards that everybody’s got to carry around, and you’ve got eight billion of them from everywhere, and then they have to click them and whatever, it can all be handled through Texting Forward where the people buy their sandwich out of their cell phone number. They type it into their system, and then it automatically knows, “Okay, they have one. They have two.” When they buy that tenth sandwich, then it will automatically send them the text with the redemption for their free sandwich.

Michael: That’s great. Like the SRDS for the direct mail industry, the Standard Rate and Data Service, are there lists for rent, mobile number mailing lists that marketers can utilize?

Kim: No.

Michael: Nothing like that?

Kim: All caps – NO NO NO!!! You should never – because that would go right against the whole concept of permission and relevance. There are companies who will get people to opt-in and say, “Yes, I want to receive,” and Jittergram is like this in a way. What they do is they’re getting people to sign up, but it’s all very specific to a specific business. They’re not saying, “Sign up to get Jittergrams from anybody.” People say, “I want Jittergrams from this business. I want that business. I want this business.” So it might be flower shops, this restaurant and then this shoe repair, but I don’t need this car repair shop or whatever. So, it has to be permission very specific permission.

Michael: Okay, that could’ve been a big mistake. Let’s talk about a couple other mistakes that I need to avoid. Using the wrong kind of text messaging. How can that be a mistake, and what would the wrong kind of text messaging be, just what we’re talking about?

Kim: I’m so glad you asked that. There are ways to send a message which is not an SMS. It’s essentially via email to your phone, and what this is its SMTP service. So, it’s almost like you say, “Send to the phone number at Sprint.com.” It will go to that phone, and it will come into that phone just like a text message for that person. It’s free for the business to send it. So, it seems very appealing because it’s free and it looks just like a text, and it’s all this excitement. However, the problem is that because it’s free, the cell phone carriers have only meant it to be a person to person limited use. It’s not authorized for commercial use because people don’t pay, so therefore because it’s not authorized for commercial, people don’t pay, they don’t have to deliver them. So, there’s no reliability in it. You could build up a whole list of numbers, be trying to send things out like this, and then they’re not getting through. Your messages are just simply not getting delivered because the cell phone carriers started realizing there’s activity going on that’s beyond a normal person to person type thing. So, they’ll stop sending it. Additionally because it’s actually an email, the phone number at Sprint.com, it’s actually an email. You fall right into the canned spam clause, and so you could be fined if someone complains. You could get a canned spam violation put on you for doing this. So, it’s just a bad, bad idea, and unfortunately, there are companies out there who will sell – they call them text messaging services. Technically, it’s texting. It’s messaging, but it’s not SMS. If there’s no short code involved, it’s not a viable business option. It’s what I mean by the wrong kind of text messaging.

Michael: Talking about another mistake, forgetting your customers are mobile.

Kim: Oh, yes, that’s a great example. If you forget that the reason someone is interacting with you is on mobile – an example of this is you see a mobile ad, and you want them to click through, and then when they click through, you don’t send them to the mobile page. The click goes to a full sized page, or you don’t remember that they’re not sitting at their desktop, or maybe what you do is you get them to opt-in to something, and then instead of continuing to work with them via mobile, you start sending them emails, and then they forget the fact that they signed up with you on mobile. So, now the email is just in their mess of everything else that they got. It’s all about staying congruent with what the person is doing and where they’re at.

Michael: Yeah, I can see that being hard. I send out an email blast to my list today, and there’s a good combination. I notice a lot of people are replying to my emails via mobile because you can see, “Sent by my iPhone or sent by my Blackberry,” but if they knew how to put the signature in there, I would never know if they’re on their mobile or not. It makes sense probably for me to maybe send out something to my list to invite them to be on the special mobile list. That makes sense. Another mistake, asking customers to do a complex transaction on their device.

Kim: You have to remember that not everyone has a full keyboard, and so if you’re trying to get people to fill in a form, you can do that. You can have like a mobile ad. You can place an ad on a mobile ad service like Ad Mob, or Google or Google AdWords or whatever. Then, when people click in, you give them a big form to fill in – their name, their email address, what they’re looking for, whatever. They’re not going to type it in. It’s too complex for mobile.

Michael: Have you heard of Roboform?

Kim: Yes, and I don’t know if they work on mobile or not.

Michael: That’d be interesting. Roboform is incredible. I bet they’re going to have something for mobile devices. They have to, and that would be a big help where you can automatically fill out forms on your device. That’s going to be a big help. You have a mistake here that says, not starting early enough. Do you think if we don’t get going now, we’re going to miss the boat?

Kim: Not completely, but I mean, certainly any one now today can start a website and jump in and do things, but it’s not as easy. When Google Adwords started, remember ads were like five cents a piece, and it was easy. Like, sometimes, you’d be the only one for your keyword, and when you were the first website. Do you remember when people would buy books to say what websites we go to? I remember buying like an internet directory or something, like a yellow pages book on what you could find. So, no, you won’t miss it entirely, but what you’ll miss out on is the opportunity of being first and grabbing up the tension, and once people start getting on a bunch of text messaging lists, the appeal will wear off. So, they will be way more careful on what they sign up for. If you can get on and you’re already one that they get, and so now they don’t want to replace you with something else. It’s just the time is now. You can’t ignore four billion people.

Michael: Where are some opportunities to advertise with mobile? You talked about that in a teleseminar some of the ad rates are really incredible especially now with the economy.

Kim: AdMob.com is one of the really great mobile advertising companies, and then Google Adwords, obviously, they have now a mobile ads component. So, you can work right in there with Google Adwords to do some things as well. So, those are probably the two biggest that you need to pay attention to, and they’re really easy to get started and work with.

Michael: You’ve given us some great links throughout this interview. Give me three more incredible links for anyone who wants to learn more about mobile, and then I want to talk about some of your specific products that you’ve created to help shortcut this process. What are some secret links that you have related to mobile that any of my listeners would really love to know about?

Kim: Do you mean like mobile sites?

Michael: Yes, whether it’s a great example of a website doing mobile well, or anything related to mobile that I would have to know about like a URL of a place that maybe you visited or a resource.

Kim: Well, certainly everyone needs to know about the Mobile Marketing Association, especially they’re best practices document. This is sort of the rules and the guidelines of what you can and can’t do with mobile, and that can be found at MMAGlobal.com/bestpractices.pdf.

Michael: Great. Let’s talk about some of the resources that could help me shortcut the process. Give me a plan to follow step by step, and hopefully get with it when it comes to mobile.

Kim: Well, one of the things that I put together is the Mobile Marketing Action Plan, and what this is literally a workbook that walks people through deciding what you want to do on mobile, really getting your bearings straight on what makes sense for you, what you should do first, what you should do next. There’s an audio interview on mindset and the strategy of mobile, so making sure you really got that figured out and that you’re really jumping in correctly, not just doing a cannon ball in the shallow end, but really making an eloquent dive from the diving board. So, that’s the first step of products. I also have the Mobile Marketing Training System which it includes a an Action Plan, but then it adds on because what I have there is modules that are both audio and PDF so there’s workbooks and audio training all around text messaging, so how to get started, how to pick the right companies, how to work through what you’re going to provide to people. There’s a whole module on mobile web, so how to build a mobile site, how to walk yourself through what tools to use, what you should put it on, and then there’s also modules on mobile SEOs, so what you need to do to make sure that you’re taking the best advantage of getting your site seen on mobile browsers, and then mobile advertising, so what to do about starting a mobile advertising campaign.

Michael: All right, and you have all the links in there of the best places to buy advertising and get in on that?

Kim: Yes.

Michael: Okay, great. Anything else?

Kim: Those are my two products, really and my two ways that I help businesses.

Michael: What is the URL that anyone listening can go investigate more about those items?

Kim: MobilePhoneMarketingExpert.com.

Michael: All right, tell me, can anything that you’ve think we’ve left out that would be really important that you want the chance to say?

Kim: I think this is a very comprehensive interview. Honestly, you went into way more depth than I was expecting, but I’m really glad to offer that because I think it’s hard to find stuff in what you’re doing in mobile. This is not like internet where there’s a ton of resources and you can learn from anybody.

Michael: Okay, one last question, and that is your gut feeling ten years from now, where do you see this whole mobile marketing? What do you think about the handhelds? Are the screens going to get bigger? Is it going to get better? What’s your gut feeling projection ten years down the road?

Kim: Well, my gut feeling is that mobile – our mobile devices will essentially be remote controls for our whole life. They’ll just do so much. I’m basing it partially on my gut, but also partially on the fact that the US is behind the curve. If you look to South Korea, they are way ahead of us. So, if you look to see what they’re doing, it’s like looking into the Jetsons for us because they’re so integrated with mobile over there. I just don’t see mobile ever going away. Would you give up your phone? No way. It just is not going to go away, and it’s just going to be more and more integrated into people’s lives in ways that I’m not sure we can even really fathom at this moment, but it’s just going to be a way of life.

Michael: I believe it. Well, Kim, this has been awesome. I know I pushed you for a lot of detailed information, and you definitely delivered and you’ve given some incredible value here. I’m sure you’ve peeked anyone’s interest here. I’m telling you, when I heard about you, I am going to take action because my website with all my interviews, I think it’ll be pretty simple to make it accessible for mobile users. I am on it. I look at this almost like the gold rush of the internet days. This is huge.