Mobile Marketing Best Practices

 

Mobile marketing is rapidly becoming the most effective means of reaching your business’s target audience. With smartphones being used as the primary way to access the internet, there are numerous advantages to using mobile marketing effectively. However, if you want to reap the benefits of this type of marketing, you need to apply the correct strategy. In this article, you’ll discover 7 mobile marketing best practices you can implement into your marketing strategies.

The Benefits of Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is an umbrella term that describes the utilization of mobile devices to attract customers. There are many unique benefits to prioritizing mobile marketing. For one, mobile marketing makes it possible to reach your customers where they already are – on their phones. 97% of Americans own and regularly use a cellphone. And, 15% of that population only surfs the web via their mobile device.

For a long time, most marketing was centered around the philosophy that casting a wide net is guaranteed to “catch a few fish”. However, today’s advanced technology, as well as changes in culture, has opened new doors for unique marketing tactics that can be even more effective.

By prioritizing mobile marketing, you’re no longer relying on customers to find you. Instead, you’re bringing your brand to them. With people spending more time on their phones than ever before, it’s the perfect opportunity to start marketing where they’re already focused.

To get more specific, it’s important to understand the various ways you can realistically implement it and make the most of what mobile marketing has to offer. Here are some mobile marketing best practices that will help you get the most from your efforts.

 

1. Know Your Goal

Marketing goals go beyond just increasing sales. One of the major benefits of mobile marketing is that it has the potential to create personalized, meaningful customer experiences. There are many ways you can employ mobile marketing tactics to benefit your business, staff, clientele, and even your brand – don’t limit your vision to just improving sales.

It’s important to work toward an established goal when you’re implementing new marketing tactics. Developing a methodical, organized, and thoughtful approach to mobile marketing can prevent issues in the long run.

Some great examples of mobile marketing goals include:

• Increase website traffic
• Increase sales
• Generate social media content/likes/views
• Improve customer relations
• Generate leads
• Receive customer feedback

Before you proceed with a marketing campaign, choose a specific, measurable, and realistic goal you want to achieve. This can give you some direction when designing your content and can save you time later.

2. Design Your Campaign

The next step in the process is choosing the campaign you want to run with. There are many different ways to go about mobile marketing, and each tactic has its own unique benefits and drawbacks. It’s important to choose a campaign that is congruent with your previously established marketing goal.

Below, you’ll learn more about some highly effective campaign types.

Location-Based

With location-based mobile marketing, you’re keeping track in some way, shape, or form of a customer’s physical location to send them specific notifications or content. This method is most effective for local businesses looking to improve foot traffic. However, it can be used in other ways as well.

Some examples include:

• Sending a customer a notification when they arrive at your store.
• Offering a discount/coupon if a customer scans a product in person.
• Showing promotions available at locations near the customer.

Activity-Based

Activity-based mobile marketing focuses on what the customer is doing and rewards it with engaging content that users are likely to respond to. Using mobile analytics, you can manually set up certain user behaviors that trigger a mobile marketing response. This grabs customers’ attention right away.

Some examples include:

• Sending a notification when a customer reaches a milestone.
• Notifying customers when new content is released.
• Sending a message to thank a customer for subscribing/leaving a like.

The important thing to remember about activity-based campaigns is that the customer’s consent is critical. Always ask customers to opt in before starting this method. Otherwise, it can become intrusive or annoying and can damage your business’s reputation.

Triggered

Triggered mobile marketing involves the use of notifications and mobile content to inform customers of offers and features they weren’t previously aware of. As opposed to activity-based marketing, triggered mobile marketing redirects customer attention from one thing to another.

Some examples include:

• Sending an email about extra features/promotions you’re offering.
• Notifying a customer about an abandoned cart in your online store.
• Inviting a customer to check out your business on another site/platform.

 

3. Target Locally

It can help to get as specific as possible when starting a mobile marketing campaign. One great way to narrow down your initial target audience, especially if you’re testing out new strategies, is to focus on local customers.

You can use location-based marketing techniques to send notifications to customers depending on where they physically are. For instance, when customers enter your store, you can send a pop-up notification letting them know about current promotions, new products, and more.

 

4. Make Sure Your Site is Mobile Friendly

When designing your mobile marketing campaign, you must focus on creating content that is mobile-friendly. Your business’s website needs to be visually appealing and easy to use on mobile platforms – otherwise, customers won’t stay long. 

Page speed is the amount of time it takes to load everything on a mobile site. It has also been shown to affect how people feel about a company. And it also has an impact on your website’s Google ranking, thus affecting visibility.

The fact is, more people surf the web via mobile every single day. You’re likely even reading this article on a smartphone right now! By optimizing your website on mobile, you’re inviting additional traffic – which can then become sales.

 

5. Create Visually Engaging Content

Another best practice is to make sure your content is visually engaging. Odds are, you’ve visited a website in the past and decided not to stay due to the way the content is visually organized. If your website is boring, overwhelming, or lacks personality, many people will lose interest. Conversely, visually engaging content will have the opposite effect. For example, if you have the option to write content on a page or shoot a promotional video, mobile visitors may prefer to watch the video. In fact, 84% of consumers agree that watching promotional videos have convinced them to purchase a product or service.

Part of creating mobile-friendly content involves using larger fonts, more concise headlines, and using highlighting to summarize content succinctly. However, it also includes appealing pictures and well-produced videos.

When people are on mobile devices, they tend to read and scroll quickly. So, in order to avoid being glossed over, try using bold, engaging titles and fonts. Then, pair those things with images and videos that captivate viewers’ attention.

 

6. Make it Clear and Concise

Keep your content focused and worded concisely. The average time most people spend on a single page of a business website across multiple industries, is about 54 seconds. That’s not a generous amount of time. But, that’s your window of opportunity to intrigue them enough to stay longer. If your content is overly wordy or filled with “fluff”, customers will pick up on it and see themselves out.

7. Leverage QR Codes

QR codes are a vastly underestimated means of mobile marketing that your business should take full advantage of. QR (short for quick-response) involves the use of an auto-generated label that is readable by smartphones. These labels link to external content. Customers scan QR codes and are guided to websites, apps, or social media platforms.

Take advantage of the accessibility of QR codes to generate website traffic. It’s free and simple to link any URL of your choice to a QR code using Google Chrome.

Try it Out

There are many different ways to practice effective mobile marketing, and it takes some experimentation to figure out what works best for you and your business. Through the use these mobile marketing best practices, you can make the most of your mobile campaigns and form better relationships with your customers.

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