Mobile marketing matters. If you’re looking for the part of your marketing strategy to spend most of your time, energy, and budget improving, a good argument could be made for your mobile marketing plan. A smart business will prioritize their mobile marketing strategy and consider its success integral to overall marketing and business success.
Why is mobile marketing important?
Mobile isn’t just the future – it’s the present. It’s where your customers are right now. According to one source:
- 80% of shoppers use smartphones during physical shopping
- Apps account for 89% of mobile media time
- Average smartphone conversion rates have gone up 64% compared to desktop
- 90% of consumers watch video on mobile
Here are some tips for a more effective mobile marketing strategy for better mobile marketing campaigns.
Your guide to mobile marketing success
1. Use the “mobility” of mobile to your advantage
Many businesses are capitalizing on location-based mobile marketing – the ability to target people on their mobile devices based on where they are. Hotels, for instance, who have employed this method and showed mobile ads to travelers on their mobile devices at the airport saw a significant rise in last-minute bookings. Mobile is particularly suited to being able to reach local and niche markets, so take advantage of this feature to maximize your reach and see more mobile marketing success.
2. Prioritize design
It can not be stressed enough how important good and more importantly mobile-optimized, the design is. In an Instagram curated world, potential customers are much less likely to be forgiving of egregious design flaws. Every part of your mobile marketing needs to be mobile-ready, from your landing pages to your emails. Customers who don’t feel like their mobile experience with a brand is up to standard – or at least as good as the other non-mobile brand assets they’ve interacted with – then it’s much more likely you’ll lose that customers interest, respect, ad sale.
3. Use the right tools
Relatedly, with the amount of mobile optimizing technology and software available, there’s no excuse for not having a superior mobile experience ready for audiences. Most marketing automation tools have some capacity to help set you up for mobile marketing success, including mobile-optimized web and email templates that mean you don’t even need to have a full-time designer on staff to be able to make a marketing impact.
4. Provide major incentives
Brands have found a lot of success incentivizing their mobile efforts. Restaurants who want to encourage downloads of their app will offer free delivery or a free meal and car dealerships who are hoping customers will download their app to boost brand awareness and selling opportunities will offer customers a free oil change or other services. Offering your customers something for taking action has helped many brands find mobile marketing engagement and success.
5. Tap into the power of video
As the stats have shown, more people are engaging with video over any other type of content and more video is being consumed on mobile devices than anywhere else. That’s why making sure that video content – from ads to product videos and demonstrations to customer testimonials to webinars – is included in your mobile marketing content strategy.
6. Utilize SMS
Mobile marketing isn’t just in-app or email marketing. Businesses often forget that SMS is a mobile technology that can be utilized for customer communications. But those that use it often prefer it to other outreach methods – people are more likely to check a text within minutes versus almost any other mobile communication notification. That means you can easily announce a sale, invite customers to an event, or send a coupon or special offer that has a far greater likelihood to actually get eyes on it.
7. Offer mobile payment options
One of the best ways to connect your brand to the mobile experience is to ensure that you offer ways for them mobile-specific ways to pay. You can offer your in-store customers the option of paying from a mobile app, like Google or Apple Pay. You should also enhance your customer experience for e-commerce shoppers. Adding payment options like PayPal can greatly increase both customer satisfaction with your brand and grow your conversions.
Pay attention to how technology changes over time and take time to understand how it might affect your mobile marketing efforts. Mobile devices have changed the way that people consume media, get information, and communication. It has created more connectivity and knowledge sharing than ever before. Your brand should be part of that. Creating a powerful marketing campaign to cut through the noise can be challenging, but is completely possible. Patience and long-term goals are critical, but with the right strategy, the right tools, the right areas of emphasis, and the right areas of focus, you can see more mobile marketing success and grow your brand.