Smart Phones and marketing, a combination made in heaven, its a rich kids playground, right? As a marketer you might be fooled into thinking that mobile phone usage and in particular Smart Phone usage is a good indicator of where the more affluent of your customers exist. I saw just that conclusion drawn by the Arkansas State University in a recent post by them when they highlighted that an eMarketer survey completed in April 2011 indicated that 71% of QR code scanner users, which by default are smart phone users,  had an income of over $50k per year. Its definitely an attractive fact to highlight. A compelling one for someone who is perhaps seeking to persuade a client or C-suite team that QR codes are something worth investing in.

Smart Phones Don’t Lead to Gold

The problem with this nugget is, that it ignores the temporal nature of the fact. That is, it will exist for a very finite moment. Quite probably by the time someone has consumed that report, decided how to use QR codes to attract that wealthier demographic and then achieved support from further up the food chain the fact will have changed. The reason it will have changed is the piece of the puzzle in mobile marketing that has been left out of this report, the sale of pre-paid smart phones.

This move, made late last year by Verizon and other cell phone providers enables many of those who were previously unable to acquire smart phones to now do so. Typically those who purchase pre-paid phones trend toward a lower income bracket than those on a contract with a smart phone. This includes those on a fixed income and those who don’t qualify for credit terms. All of which adds up to the trend that you just bought into being skewed heavily downward in a short space of time.

Smart Phones And the Bigger Picture

All of this goes to show that seeing the bigger picture is very important when lining up a marketing drive around a particular technology. There is no doubt that QR codes, for example, are going to play a part in the marketing mix over the next year or so, however, the part they play may not be determined by the economic drivers previously indicated. The chances are that QR codes are going to be used as drivers for a much broader demographic than previously thought and this holds true for most smart phone based campaigns.

Knowing this before you decided to bet on a particular technology is extremely valuable especially when the “buzz” seems to indicate otherwise. We are going to see a lot more in the coming quarters as the focus of markers move from the tethered online world to the mobile online world. The trick is to both understand the consumer and how the mobile social consumer differs from the tethered social consumer and how the actions of the mobile social consumer are triggered differently.

Smart Phones And the Social Consumer

Already we are seeing how the social consumer is using mobile devices in ways that marketers had not thought of. We are also seeing that they have different trigger points. For example a recent study by The Baby Center showed that for many women the trigger point for purchasing a smart phone was giving birth. The need to stay connected, socially, through a phone was extremely important to new mothers. The device allows them to take their support network with them wherever they go.

Interrupting that network is unlikely to endear a brand to the social consumer, providing helpful advice on the other hand is. So the way messages are delivered is also changing. The mobile social consumer has an increased opportunity to spread the word for a brand. After all it’s still easier to just tell the person you are with about the experience than it is to type it.

How are Smart Phones impacting your marketing plan?