Are you making the most of mobile marketing? Our phones are becoming increasingly powerful and present in all our lives – and in the lives of your clients and potential clients too. Gino Lisondra from AccountantsDaily shares SIX key ways you can benefit from this realm of marketing often overlooked by small business. Image from Visualhunt. ~WizeOwl
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We are increasingly becoming a mobile-first society as consumers and producers. Business owners and managers who aren’t focusing their efforts on mobile marketing may need a reality check.
Mobile has quickly become king, and as such, business owners and managers need to respond and adapt to this reality by streamlining marketing strategies to maximise their benefits, and capitalise on opportunities for further business and financial growth.
You engage in mobile marketing when you design and effect promotional activities aimed at mobile devices to satisfy your specific business and marketing objectives, as well as further your marketing campaigns across different mobile platforms and/or channels.
Mobile-friendly site(s)
Marketers have now learned that mobile is king. So first things first: make sure all your sites are mobile-ready and mobile-responsive. Customers and your target market now want to pinch, zoom, scratch, and tick off their purchases, even their items wishlist. This reality has prompted businesses to make sure their sites are mobile user-friendly and continue to be so.
But here’s the thing: your mobile site shouldn’t just be fun, it should also seriously take into account streamlining customers’ checkout processes, and making sure it’s easier and faster to do so. You do this by reducing your bandwidth length — not one of your pages should be slow loading, as mobile users are found to be less patient than people using desktops/PCs.
Logins using your customers’ social media accounts help make the process faster and more efficient. You may include an option where clients can login using their Facebook accounts, and once they’re in, make sure they’re hooked. Remember, customers who are afforded the time to rethink and reprocess their purchases are more likely to reshelve items or postpone the entire purchasing process.
Also, creating your own mobile app will no doubt intensify all the above strategies and more. Online guides are easily accessible to assist you in designing and customising even just a basic app, for starters. If not, you can hire a developer or select a trusted app development company to design your own mobile app — all these options are available to you whether you’re running on a very limited budget or your company can spare a considerable amount.
Mobile-friendly content
Produce content based on your market and needs analyses. Ask yourself: what do my customers need and want to see while on the go? Unlearn desktop writing — all your tabs, pages, links, and other auxiliary site components are no longer needed and vital.
Bear in mind that mobile devices display content on smaller, more limited screens. So make sure your content is simple but engaging. An effective content combines crisp and attractive visuals — photos or videos — with straightforward, relevant, and minimal text.
Your goal is to engage your current customers and your potential ones, inspiring them to act upon seeing/experiencing your mobile content. The desired action, of course, is them purchasing/availing your products/services.
Deals, treats, and coupons
Never underestimate the power of freebies and the traditional — but still very effective — coupon. Now, however, you utilise mobile coupons. Recent studies reveal around 96 per cent of mobile customers still use coupons, and mobile coupon redemption rate is even 10 times higher than magazine-clipped coupons.
Reach and engage your mobile target market by employing mobile coupons, treats, deals, and even freebies. When you incentivise your mobile customers, you’re also making sure you’re increasing revenue by utilising SMS and email push notifications. Greater redemption is observed in promos sent when a target customer is near a store’s location or has just gone through your site.
Nothing engages your customers better than the words “free” and “exclusive treats.” Of course, when employing all these strategies, you still keep a sharp sense of business. Only proceed with freebies and treats you’re sure will bring more value and benefits to your business.
Mobile payment options
It’s a given your customers would want the fastest, most convenient, but still the safest way to transact. To make sure you cater to this demand, you need to make mobile payment options on your sites and pages available.
This is crucial if you want your business to remain relevant and thriving. Make sure all your services accept and are easily accessible by mobile devices — yes, even smartwatches! Make sure, though, that your mobile payment security is top-of-the-line, so insist only on the most secure shopping and payment processor for all your mobile payment instruments on all your sites and pages.
Mobile-only social
Marketers and business managers have now recognised the popularity — and imminent power — of mobile-only social apps. Establishing the right mobile presence on the social media platform giants like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr is now a must. Make sure you develop and employ specific strategies for each social media platform, to maintain customer and target market support and engagement.
Diversify content, but make sure they all serve to fortify and strengthen your brand. This means you can post the same or similar content(s) across your social media domains, or different ones — depending on your business and marketing needs and goals, really. The key considerations here, however, are still brand identity and customer engagement. When you satisfy these two, it means you are producing effective mobile content and utilising them well across platforms.
Maximise on your specific strategies
Maximising on your specific mobile strategies need not be complex and tedious. Remember to just use the right and proper keywords in your content marketing. Focus and prioritise on special offers and sales.
Be sure your contact information is included on your mobile sites and pages, and are then easily accessible. And, be compatible with your current customers as well as your target market.
Being compatible means you’ve made sure all your sites and pages are easily accessible by most, if not all, perceivable mobile devices available to and/or used by your customers and target market.
Ensure all your mobile marketing modules, materials, and contents are compatible with all mobile devices. Continuously update materials to make sure they are also continuously compatible, and thus always easily accessible.
Text/SMS marketing
Employing a text or SMS marketing strategy as a support to your overall mobile marketing goals will also bring more value to your business, as well as opportunities for financial growth. You may be surprised at how easy text/SMS marketing schemes are done.
What you need to do is to design an opt-in campaign or set of campaigns that allow your current customers as well as your potential ones to sign up and receive special messages, exclusive deals, notifications, alerts, and rewards for joining said campaign(s).
Utilise this platform to allow your customers to make more diverse and specific actions all beneficial to your mobile marketing goals, and consequently, to your business. These customer actions range from participating in surveys or even just being redirected to your main website or focused pages.
Make sure you reward customers who regularly participate in your campaigns, and engage new participants, too, so they keep on joining your future campaigns.
When you recognise that mobile now reigns supreme, you can easily adapt and shift your marketing plans towards effectively harnessing all possible benefits from your mobile marketing strategies.
Doing so means you’re not only making sure you stay updated, but you’re ensuring you’re ahead and on top of the competition, and that your business thrives.