In today’s economy, there is more competition for consumer interest and dollars than ever before. Retail stores are engaged in particularly tough competition as consumer purses are often closed when it comes to items that are not immediate necessities. With the holiday season almost upon us, it is important for anyone who owns or operates a retail store to develop creative ways to reach out to their customers. Many major players in the retail arena are turning to mobile marketing as a way to help boost awareness and sales. Here are a few creative ideas for integrating mobile marketing and mobile advertising into the marketing mix for your retail store.

SMS/Text Message Marketing-One of the easiest ways for you to incorporate mobile marketing into your mix right now is sms or text message marketing. Some neat ideas for retail using SMS/Texting:

Low inventory alerts- Send a message out to customers when a hot ticket item is almost out of stock in your store. You’ll not only drive sales and clear your stock, but you’ll also drive clicks and foot traffic to your store.

Loyalty Programs- Build your opt-in list and drive sales with text based loyalty programs. Your customers opt-in (sign up) to receive outgoing messages from your store. In exchange, you send them special deals and discounts that are exclusive to SMS Members.

Contests-  You can use mobile technology to create and execute fun contests for your customers. You could hold a contest for your most popular item, a gift package, or anything that will drive customer attention. Contests are easy to organize and keep track of when prompt the audience to text in order to enter. Another way to use mobile is to drive customers to your mobile website to enter. And if you want to give consumers the ultimate convenience, create a contest in print that allows them to simply snap a bar code to enter.

Use Location Based Apps- Why reach out to customers who aren’t ready to purchase immediately, when you can now reach customers who are in your neighborhood, on your street, or in your store? Use location based marketing to market to customers who are the most crucial- the ones who are at or close to the purchase point. Things you can do to participate in location-based marketing:

Be there-Make sure your store is active in the major location-based networks. Here are a couple of big ones: Foursquare, Brightkite, Yelp, Gowalla, and Loopt. Don’t forget social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Get Creative with Events/Promotions- Give customers an incentive for visiting and “checking in” at your store. Run a coffee shop? How about offering a free cup of joe with every 10th check in? Own an electronics shop? Conduct a check-in raffle for a free ipod. The opportunities are only as limited as your imagination!

General Tips- With any mobile campaign you run, you’ll need to make sure that all marketing messages from you are sent to an opted-in list. It can be tempting to blast out texts to as many consumers as possible, but remember, in this end this will only damage your list, and you could end up being blacklisted completely. Another extremely important tip is, make sure whatever you do, it is measurable. One of the greatest aspects of mobile marketing is it’s ability to deliver measurable results. You can know exactly what messaging, markets, even time of day works best for you. Use every mobile marketing campaign as a learning opportunity. Lastly, before you start your campaign, take time to really think about what you want from your mobile marketing efforts. What are your goals and expected outcomes for your campaign? What is your break even? How will you measure success? What metrics will you look at? CPC? CPM? Click-to-Call rate? A large portion of time should be devoted to answering these kinds of important questions.

If you’re in the retail business, and you’re looking for mobile solutions that you can count on to deliver results, visit www.mowbi.com or call 1-800-985-9277. Questions or ideas? E-mail Bill@mowbi.com or Jordan@mowbi.com