Today's brainstorm of ideas is about mobile marketing campaigns in shopping malls/high-streets, and shops in general.

I've put down a number of ideas that I've long had in mind, and would love to see applied somewhere in the world soon. (I'm not claiming none of these has ever been applied -- this is just a summary of what you could do with mobile marketing in such a setting).

Note: this started out as one post, but I've now split it in two because it turned out too long. Part 2 coming soon..

Perhaps one of the most obvious applications for proximity marketing in malls/stores/etc, is using mobile coupons (mCoupons) in order to attract passers-by inside the store, by publicizing offers to them.

mCoupons work a number of different ways, using a number of different mobile marketing techniques, ranging from sms marketing (but people would have to sign up first giving you their number), to mobile internet marketing (where you would publish the offer on a relevant page and then use internet marketing techniques accordingly), to in-game mobile marketing, etc.

Now, some would say at this point that what proximity marketing has to offer in comparison to the aforementioned approaches is that you can reach everyone in range of your system, without the need for them to initiate the interaction -- and this is true you can reach everyone that has bluetooth on, for example. The question is, do you really want to?

This is a common mistake that's easy to make (frankly, this also the main reason why proximity marketing is sometimes 'misunderstood' by the consumers) -- let me explain why by painting this picture: imagine walking through a mall/high-street and receive an ad message on your mobile phone for every single shop you walk past -- obviously not everything interests you, and not everything is relevant. You get the picture, right?

That's why it is important, even with proximity marketing, to let the consumer initiate the interaction (i.e. run opt-in campaigns, rather than opt-out). This way you will probably end up with less recipients for your message in total, but with a dramatically higher percentage of potential conversions, because your message has now become both targeted and relevant. Also, and perhaps more importantly, you don't end up spamming everyone else that's not interested.

So, proximity marketing does offer the ability to reach passers-by, but I would advise that you still let them decide and indicate to you that they are interested. Once they do, mCoupons are ideal because they are portable, stored on the consumer's most personal electronic device, in a multimedia form, and very direct.

There is a certain type of shopper that goes into the store already knowing what it is they want to buy. These shoppers would usually have to go inside every shop in a mall (or high street) trying to find what they need.

A proximity marketing system installation (or similar mobile marketing service -- implementations range from sms marketing to bluetooth marketing, etc) could come to fill this need, by providing the shopper with the ability to quickly browse each shop's catalog using their mobile phone, or even better search for the product(s) they need using the appropriate keywords, so as to retrieve the list of stores with the product in stock.

Malls already frequently run a number of quiz campaigns, often hand out questionnaires, or run polls to get consumers' views on certain subjects.

Turning these mobile has plenty of advantages, including a richer interaction, a more direct and a more personal approach.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, it makes data entry and analysis much much simpler tasks and also allows for dynamic statistics, which could be very useful in adjusting the campaign in real-time.

Finally, because this is still relatively new, I have seen such approaches boosting participation rates, even if only at the beginning of the campaign.

That's it for today, hope you enjoyed it -- part 2 coming soon...