Effective mobile marketing strategies require forward planning. A large part of the planning process is conducting a comprehensive market research campaign that will furnish your advertising department with raw data. Lots of it. Statistics and figures are grist to the marketing mill. They can help you target specific demographics with the right message, and avoid wasting time and money on revenue dead ends.

Research is particularly vital for mobile user behavior, as opposed to traditional broadcast channels which still use a one-size-fits all approach. Because mobile marketing advertising needs to be precision-engineered for personal preferences, research must also be personalized and relevant.

One notable case study, presented recently at the Market Research in the Mobile World (MRMW) conference, concerns Heineken’s forays into the emerging African beer market. The brand has been courting consumers on the continent for a hundred years, and has recently added mobile marketing to its overall strategy. Heineken gathered figures on top-volume beer retailers and made price comparisons with competitors. They used maps to plot the densities of product coverage in different regions and planned their sales routes accordingly.

The answers to these questions will form the bedrock of your mobile marketing strategies[BC1] . Reboot these questions via surveys and polls at least once every quarter. The answers will be dramatically different from month to month, so there is no point creating campaigns based on market research you conducted 18 months ago.

Keep your data fresh and up-to-the-minute. Reach out to people outside your core demographic (this will probably involve offering a freebie in return for filling in a survey). Above all, remember this: research the market to reach the market.