A promi­nent exec­u­tive in mobile mar­ket­ing has offered some key advice to cre­atives hold­ing media jobs in mobile adver­tis­ing agen­cies: focus on cus­tomer experience.

Writ­ing in the online mar­ket­ing news and infor­ma­tion out­let iMe­di­a­Con­nec­tion, Deb­o­ra Lance (Exec­u­tive VP and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of mobile mar­ket­ing agency Walh­strom) draws atten­tion to research from Bor­rell Asso­ciates. This research fore­casts that adver­tis­ers are set to more than dou­ble their spend­ing on local mobile adver­tis­ing this year, from $1.5 bil­lion in 2012 to £3.2 billion.

She writes, “If your mobile cam­paign solves a prob­lem, makes life eas­i­er, or ful­fills a need, cus­tomers will inter­act with your ad, ulti­mate­ly dri­ving sales.”

Lance rec­om­mends the deploy­ment three core strategies.

Use geo-tar­get­ing wisely

Loca­tion-tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing is, accord­ing to Lance, an “extreme­ly pow­er­ful” means of iden­ti­fy­ing inter­est­ed con­sumers and prompt­ing them to vis­it or make a pur­chase. As she puts it, “Imag­ine receiv­ing a reminder to pick up char­coal for the grill when you’re stand­ing in front of the meat counter at the gro­cery store or learn­ing about a great ken­nel when you’re with your dog at the local dog park.”

Foursquare’s recent expe­ri­ence demon­strates the pow­er admirably. It test­ed self-pro­mot­ing list­ings with a clus­ter of small firms in New York which let them push out mobile offers rapid­ly and eas­i­ly. It was a big suc­cess, and will go nation­wide shortly.

Push and customize

Mobil­i­ty lends a new twist to incen­tivized calls to action. They can be imme­di­ate offers, like a restau­rant offer­ing a mobile coupon that’ll expire at 6.00 p.m. But tim­ing is key – the offer needs to go out when the cus­tomer is most recep­tive and not too far in advance (or they’ll for­get about it).

Final­ly, cam­paigns need to be cus­tomized to the advertiser’s tar­get audi­ence. Mobile web­site Food­u­cate, which aims to help peo­ple make health­i­er food choic­es, uses vis­i­tor data like birth­day, health goals, weight and exer­cise lev­els to pleas­ant­ly sur­prise users with rel­e­vant pro­mo­tions. These could be an offer on new ten­nis shoes from a local retail­er after 300 miles of run­ning, or an ad for a new out­fit after los­ing ten pounds.

Peo­ple will share infor­ma­tion so long as mar­keters use it to give them the right offers and expe­ri­ence. And recent research by Flur­ry shows that con­sumers expect mobile adver­tis­ing because they know it pro­vides free content.