Let me put the bottom line upfront!
If mobile isn’t at the very heart of your digital marketing policy, it’s time for you to seriously review your priorities.
There is no excuse! In 2015, mobile traffic had overtaken desktop traffic and this gap has only continued to expand. Therefore, developing a mobile marketing strategy is key to keeping the digital marketing campaign going forward.
Acclimating your digital initiatives to mobile entails clearly defining core elements of your marketing activities and delivering them to your users’ mobile devices. The demand for handheld devices has come to maturity, and consumers are more than ready for mobile marketing.
So, let’s have a look at what mobile marketing is, what methods it uses and how you can use it to maximize sales so that you can better understand and integrate this into your strategy?
What is Mobile Marketing?
Mobile marketing is a dynamic digital marketing strategy focused on reaching target audiences on their smartphones, tablets, and/or other handheld devices through websites, emails, SMS and MMS, social media, and apps.
Its major benefit is that it opens a personal connection between the advertisers and their audience, providing a range of possibilities for personalization.
Why to use Mobile Marketing?
Over the recent years, the growing popularity of smartphones has transformed the way we access information and our consumer behavior along with it. This has given rise to a different way of looking at marketing, to the point that many analysts now argue that mobile advertisement represents a whole paradigm change, rather than just adaptation.
Do you know why?
Let me tell you…
- The average daily time spent online for smartphones is 2 hours and 34 minutes, and for tablets is 1 h 19 m.
- Mobile users download 2 applications every month on average, have 17.8 already installed, and use 9.1 daily.
- In combination with television, one in three smartphone users also use their smartphone as a “second screen.”
- 9 In every 10 smartphone users, at some point, used it in the purchasing process (especially those between the ages of 16 and 45).
- 4 In every 10 users have used mobile commerce.
Aren’t these figures astounding? And testament to the fact that mobiles are a potent tool for marketing.
How to Create a Mobile Marketing Strategy?
As with every marketing campaign, each brand and company must establish a specific mobile strategy based on the industry and target audience. Mobile technology is mostly about personalization and customization, which also includes mobile marketing.
Step 1 – Create Mobile Buyer Personas
Knowing your audience is the first step in any marketing campaign, and buyers’ personas are a valuable source of information to understand that. Buyer personas are basically a fictional depiction of your different customer groups. Build a profile that defines the context, job requirements, key information sources, priorities, challenges, preferred content type, objections, and/or position in the procurement process of each of your customer groups. This will help establish a platform and voice your marketing messages.
Make a clear point about documenting the mobile usage patterns of your target audience. How much of their web use on mobile devices does happen? Are they at ease in completing purchases on smartphones? Researching big data reports on mobile usage is really a simple way to get started.
Track Google Analytics for the mobile traffic numbers on your site to better understand your target audience. You may also query clients and prospective customers about their mobile web usage or survey them.
A / B testing— which compares two variants of the same campaign — can also be useful for creating almost any aspect of buyer personas. Do your email campaign landing pages get more views when you send a related email on weekends or on weekdays when all the other factors are the same? In the mornings or at night? What title or topic email receives more click-throughs?
This data can assist in building audiences that involve smartphone use.
Step 2 – Set Goals
The key to determining any successful strategy is to determine first what do you want to achieve? Map the mobile marketing plan together with main stakeholders. Identify objectives by asking your team this kind of questions:
- What do we do for mobile users at the moment? This determines your starting point and ensures that everyone is on the same page when you start.
- If you already do web marketing, how is it going? This discussion should explain what tends to work currently, what isn’t and what isn’t even evaluated.
- What are your key goals to integrate mobile marketing into your overall strategy? Discuss why you are now considering phones, what discussions have been leading up to this stage and what are you expecting from mobile marketing.
- Who are your primary Mobile Marketing audiences? Discuss about your customers in the light of updates on mobile usage. How similar or different is the mobile use of your target audience?
- How do you manage your mobile audience across different channels? This topic will help examine how you might integrate the platforms you are currently using into your mobile marketing strategy.
Step 3 – Establish KPIs
Just like any other marketing activity, you need to evaluate and optimize mobile marketing. Set out practical and tangible KPIs that describe the success of your mobile campaign.
- Engagement — Providing smartphone-friendly content for potential customers seeking information about your product or company. To boost the mobile SEO, make sure that your website is mobile-responsive.
- Acquisition — Make sure that emails the cultivate lead are mobile-friendly with simple calls to action. Buttons in emails should be close to the top of the text and wide enough to be clicked easily to encourage click-throughs. More importantly, make it as short as possible for someone to fill out a form on a mobile-optimized landing page.
- Customer Service— Customer service is very much a marketing tool in a connected social marketplace. Enable your customers to reach you easily, including simple click-to-call buttons for mobile users, via any platform they wish.
To find the right KPIs for your mobile marketing campaign, you must ask yourself:
- Do I wish to increase conversions through emails?
- Am I striving to improve sales-page traffic?
- How necessary is it for me to attract more qualified prospects?
- Does our brand need to boost sales by converting traffic on some pages?
Step 4 – Monitor Mobile Metrics
Google Analytics can help track your site’s usage through mobile:
- Data regarding mobile usage shows how well your mobile content targets your audience.
- Mobile conversion data will show whether you still need to customize any of your main landing pages for mobile browsing or not.
Adding a category field for User Device on the dashboard of your website would show the quantity and quality of the mobile traffic to any single page of your website.
The table on the Dashboard for site content contains metrics such as page views and bounce rate. Tap the “Secondary Dimension” button above the first column to add the Device Category and pick “Device Category” from the “Users” submenu. The table will then show the most visited pages on your website, per device, and then you can see how your web traffic is affected by the mobile.
This information can indicate which search queries will lead to mobile traffic to your site, which content your mobile audience is most interested in, and which pages to optimize first for mobile browsing.
Mobile-Friendly Website
A website that is mobile friendly is no longer an option — it’s a must. The increase in mobile traffic combined with Google’s ranking criterion for mobile-friendliness means that the site of a brand must adapt to mobile devices in order to remain competitive.
“Mobile-friendliness” for search engines means:
- The content fits on the mobile screen without scrolling or zooming side-to-side.
- Content loads fast.
- No Mobile-specific errors on site.
Google has also made available a free mobile-friendly resource to help advertisers decide how best to develop their pages.
The key reason for maintaining a platform that is mobile-friendly is to create a consistent and engaging user experience.
A primary marketing goal should be to ensure the mobile app experience is as simple and smooth as possible.
Mobile Advertising Through Emails
With 49 % of email opened on mobile platforms, it’s clear that your audience is engaging with email campaigns on mobile devices.
Many email marketing providers will use responsive design— a technique that automatically formats web page content for optimal viewing on any device — but some key considerations are still in mind when designing email CTAs for mobile users:
- Position CTA early in the message (whenever possible above the fold).
- Render buttons with at least 44×44 pixels, so they’re easy to “tap.”
Email sends should optimize what is shown in the mobile inbox—”From “field has a maximum limit of 23 characters and subject line, 38 characters.
Lastly, if your email is mobile-friendly but the click-through goes to a landing page that isn’t optimized for mobile, the visitor is likely to get annoyed and bounce off the page.
Creating a special landing page for an email campaign is a perfect way to optimize your site for mobile users. Also, a unique landing page lets you create a set of metrics that will help track the campaign’s mobile performance.
SMS and MMS Marketing
Short messaging service, widely known as SMS, is an effective mobile marketing tool which enables you to send a message directly to the personal computer of a customer or potential customer. SMS and MMS are very effective mobile marketing platforms.
More than 5 billion users can send or receive SMS messages and 90% of those messages are opened within three minutes (compared to an average of 90 minutes for the email).
It is important to note that marketing to mobile devices directly is more personal than targeting an audience through other channels. If you reach someone by text, SMS, or MMS on a mobile device, you meet that person in his / her pocket or purse. So, you must be polite, clear and personal. You must:
- Keep the text under 160 characters.
- Not use slang or abbreviations.
- Give something of interest to the receiver.
- Make clear who sends the post.
- Offer a clear the call-to-action.
Adding Mobile Apps to the Mix
Mobile apps can support several business goals, including product growth, engagement drive, and even e-commerce support. To enhance the effect of an app on your marketing, you’ll want to be present in the whole process, from app development to implementation.
As with every other marketing channel, it is necessary to understand whether to use the app for acquisition purposes. In return for a user’s contact details, you may provide additional functions or more mobile content, similar to how you would gate content for the same reason on your website. You’ll also want to make sure that the app promotes user engagement to develop relationships and loyalty and drive conversions.
Summing Up
Mobile marketing strategy is a focal point of every long-term or short-term marketing campaign- and not a stand-alone initiative- with ever increasing significance.
There is a mobile marketing platform to reach all of your audience at the forum of their choice, like email, PPC, SEO, material, and social media marketing
Optimizing your website and sending emails to mobile devices, taking advantage of the SMS and MMS networks, and building a native app for your highly active audience are all big ventures. So, you may start by getting a better idea of where the bulk of your target market is spending their mobile time by updating your customer personas. That’s going to give you the starting line, and the rest will fall into a logical order.
Mobile technology is here to stay and is not going away anytime soon. The optimization of your mobile marketing plan will give your brand an advantage over the competition.
So, don’t waste time – Go Mobile!
