MOBILE MARKETING STRATEGIES
Mobile marketing constitutes over half of all consumed marketing media. From social media to television and web series, to the news and even ads for your local dentist - everything and everyone demands your brand be accessible from a few swipes on a mobile device.
What Is It?
Mobile marketing refers to any marketing topics, campaigns, graphics, etc. – any ad-related material that a user consumes on the go via a mobile or smart device. This is all digital-based marketing and does not include traditional marketing methods like magazines, newspaper ads, or brochures. As previously mentioned, it’s the home to over half of all consumed marketing media, making it a digital goldmine, figuratively speaking.
What’s the Benefit?
To put it plainly, “everyone’s doing it!” This is the one time we’ll invite you to hop on that bandwagon. Mobile marketing meets your users where they already are - browsing social media, responding to texts, checking their emails, or watching videos. Ads are easily placeable, and users are easily reachable at each of these access points. All that’s left is your camera-ready content that’s ready to promote your business.
To get started, let’s review the foundation needed to begin the successful journey of implementing mobile marketing strategies.
Our Foundation
Making your website mobile responsive should be your brand’s #1priority.
A Mobile Responsive Website
A mobile responsive website should be priority #1 for any business, eCommerce or otherwise. Hard-to-navigate websites from a mobile perspective are one of the top killers in user engagement. If a user is unable to find what they’re looking for on a site within five seconds, they’ll abandon that brand for its competitor, no questions asked. While most platforms like Squarespace have built-in mobile responsive features, other platforms such as Shopify and Weebly do require a bit more attention paid to details like padding, alignment, and sizing of images or content.
Hi-Res content (videos, images, resized content, etc.)
Hi-Res or High-Resolution content helps brands add validity to their marketing efforts. It’s what sets brands apart from others, much like mobile responsiveness. High-Resolution content ensures that users have the same experience while engaging with your brand, no matter the type of smart device. Slacking on this particular concept will make way for easily avoidable mistakes, like slow load times, disabled videos, or indiscernible imaging because a video file was too small. Check out these best practices to keep your content in check.
Hi-Res or High-Resolution content helps brands add validity to their marketing efforts.
eCommerce Integration
For our product and service-based brands, it’s important to have your offerings readily available online as well. Meaning your website – your virtual marketplace – should integrate well with your marketing. If you’re a local retail boutique, a user should be able to purchase your products anywhere from Instagram to Facebook to directly from the website itself. As a user looking to book a consultation with a new hair salon, one should be able to do this from the sponsored ad that pops up on Twitter. This practice is in line with OmniChannel retailing, which we talk about in further detail here.
A Mobile Buying Persona (The Creative Direction)
Your mobile buying persona is a bit of a creative exercise that involves creating a persona, or a profile, of what your consumer looks like. Typically, a marketing team discusses important questions like “how old is our customer?” “What are their political values?” “What is their economic background?” “Do they value high-quality goods, or are they a penny-pincher?” At the end of the process, brands should be able to provide a comprehensive breakdown of just who exactly they are targeting in their marketing efforts. This will save time and, in turn, money for the brand as they better understand just who it is that would be interested, and who won’t be.
The Holy Grail: The Google My Business Profile
The Google My Business profile is a primetime gateway for new users to discover your brand who may have never heard of you before. It’s where the importance of SEO comes into play, as many users will encounter your Google Business profile first before navigating to any other facet of your brand’s resources, like social media or even your website. That means having your Google Business profile as up-to-date as possible with operating hours, links, updated menus if you’re a restaurant, and so on. Keep this gateway as updated as possible. Add calendar reminders for yourself and/or your team members to help keep your progress on track. Having an updated Google profile will boost your reputation as a business, encourage users to engage with your content, and hopefully land a sale or two along the way.
Voice search optimization
Users who are visually impaired use smart devices and engage with advertisements in different ways. In order to digest the desired content, users employ a voice reader to dictate what’s displayed on the screen. This is where practicing accessibility comes into play. Using alternative text on images, employing proper grammar and capitalization in copy and hashtags will help provide a better user experience from a visual and auditory perspective.
The Strategy: Building Campaigns (And Which Kind)
So, now that we have our foundation to build solid strategies towards supporting mobile marketing campaigns, let’s talk about what those can look like and in their various platforms or spaces.
Personalized Campaigns
Personalization is key for most of these campaigns, as it’s the quickest way to keep a user engaged. Finding ways to include the user’s first name in your correspondence is the key to opening the door to that next purchase or desired action. We have a full blog on it here.
Text Messages
Text message-based campaigns are one of the easiest ways to introduce your brand to the mobile marketing industry. They’re readable by voice readers, don’t require images, and are succinct and to the point. Try out a few new sales or specials using this platform before navigating into the other types of marketing. Or, if you’re well-versed in other methods, there is no harm in testing out this service.
In-App Purchases & Ads
In-App purchases are a common practice amongst apps that operate on a ”freemium” basis. Meaning, their base apps are free to download to the device, but adding new features, accessing different levels within the game – those can be released to users but at a price. Sometimes, these apps also feature ads in between levels or calls to action downloads of information that direct users to engage with the ad, either to download the game or purchase a product using a discount code specifically designed to reward users who are already using the current app in operation. We recommend researching the type of content your audience likes to consume, whether it be easy apps like Snapchat or TikTok, or more involved apps like Bejeweled or other tactical games.
Tips for the Future:
Goals, short or long term
As you look forward to the future of your mobile marketing, it’s important to set attainable, realistic goals that help further guide your growth process in marketing. As you analyze your progress, success, or otherwise along the way, use that information to better inform the key identifiers in those goals, and how far along down the timeline they should be. For instance, we’d recommend starting with text-messaging ads specifically to your opted-in customers and testing efficacy there for one to three months, before moving on to investing in ad space on third-party websites.
Consistent Social Media with a PLAN!
Consistency, like in many things, is a key element to a successful business. However, consistency doesn’t exist without a solidified plan. Your social media is no exception. Make plans to build out your social media postings at least two weeks in advance, and your advertising at least one to two months in advance. Your social media postings can act as supplemental content for your ongoing campaigns. Meaning, when a new user discovers your brand through a circulating ad, your brand messaging “checks out” against the ad that brought them in.
Pick & Choose: Text vs. Email
Choosing between which interface to start your marketing efforts on will depend on the demographic of your audience. While everyone may have access to text messaging, it’s possible your users are from the Greatest Generation and prefer an email, so they can come back and read it later, whereas a text message with included hyperlinks can be confusing. Or, your audience includes users who do not have access to email or a consistent WiFi connection, ergo a text message is more accessible. By the time you reach this decision, it’s expected that you truly understand your audience, their accessibility, as well as their needs. From here, picking between platforms before choosing to move forward with both should be much easier.
Choose your micro-moment
A bit of a jaunt down psychology lane, the “micro-moment” is one of many moments, sometimes up to one hundred times a day, when a user picks up their smartphone. This is to either look up information, take care of a task, or distract themselves from a task through social media. In these moments lie opportunities to deploy mobile marketing strategies by way of the “notifications” feature. Release flash sales via text messages during lunch, or happy hour specials at 4:30p to catch the eyes of favorite weekly regulars. Are you a coffee bar looking to clear out excess retail bags of beans? Send out emails at 6:00 am that morning alerting subscribers that bags are 20% off so that they see it hopefully before hitting the Mr. Coffee button. Whatever micro-moment fits your demographic, it’s a great chance to take advantage of impulsive action and, in turn, impulse purchasing practices.
Stick to Local SEO
Local SEO refers to keywords used to search for businesses or related information in your area of business, both geographically and just within your specific industry. Using keywords that are common industry terms, or colloquial phrases that are easily associated with your brand should be a part of your brand communication guide. These phrases should be researched by reviewing competitive brands as well as your local economy’s fellow operating business members, who would have a significant crossover of audience demographic. This information will help better inform your audience demographic, down to their preferred word choice.
Executive Summary
Mobile marketing is the inevitable pathway for most if not all brands seeking to advertise to their users beyond the storefront, beyond billboards and paper ads. As we look to bring companies to omnichannel operations, the need to migrate almost completely to digital is more and more apparent. As you work your business through this transition, we recommend starting with mobile marketing as a “tester” environment to gauge your audience and whether it not it works for you and your future marketing endeavors. Either way, we guarantee that mobile marketing strategies will come in handy somewhere along your path to success. If you need help getting started on implementation or even development, don’t hesitate to contact us.
