Here are a few tips, trends and important concepts to consider when building your mobile marketing campaigns. Put down your laptop, smartphone or tablet (because chances are extremely good that you’re using at least one of those devices right now) and think about how much the advancements of the last decade have changed our lives. The only thing more astounding than the widespread use of smartphones is the incredible rate at which they have become powerful little computers in our pockets. Anything from answering emails, to trading stocks or watching movies, can be done from a smartphone.
What does this mean for business owners? First and foremost, the drastic technological developments and ever-changing nature of digital marketing provides business with a great opportunity to better connect with their target market. Many of the companies that are now taking advantage of the exceptional growth in the mobile market.
In Constant Motion – Mobile Marketing
The Third Screen Evolution - The first and second screens were the television and computer, respectively. TV and the Internet changed the face of marketing from the dawn of their inceptions, and it seems natural to expect that the mobile device –the third screen – would have the same effect. Here are just a few of the shifts in behavior that the third screen is eliciting:
- According to Google, 44% of consumers use their smartphones while shopping, often holding a product in one hand while searching for reviews or price comparisons on their phone with the other hand.
- Instead of eyeballing newspapers and magazines while waiting in checkout lines, Google says that 59% of us are now using this waiting period to browse the Internet on their smartphones.
- Google also found that 48% of us actually use our third screens while eating, often taking pictures of our meals and sharing them via social networks like Facebook and Pinterest.
It might not be immediately obvious how these changes in behavior directly affect your business, but it should be abundantly clear that consumers are using their smartphones for more than just making calls and texting friends. And if you can submit to the notion that the third screen is not only here to stay, but is also the chosen device of the younger generation (your customers of tomorrow), then you’ve taken the first step towards understanding the potential of mobile marketing.
Mobile Marketing Techniques – Engage On The Go
The key to mobile marketing success, in most cases, involves incorporating small adjustments to your campaigns. By now, the majority of companies are active on social media and they understand that there is a large percentage of consumers on mobile, so your main goal should be to mobilize all your campaigns to ensure they are as effective as possible.
Here are key areas where you can leverage mobile engagement:
- Social media: an important element within your social strategies is finding the best way to communicate to the different third screen devices. With smartphone users, keep your messages short and ensure they are easily shareable via mobile. Tablet users are more likely to engage with content, so messaging can be media rich, more visual (video is especially effective) and longer form.
- Text messaging: most people are very comfortable with text messaging since they do it so frequently. This presents an interesting opportunity for businesses to engage with customers in a way that’s convenient to them. Just be sure to use an opt-in approach.
- Local: for businesses that depend on local customers, knowing the location of your prospects a tremendously valuable piece of information. If you offer products and services, you can tap into this and use mobile to offer specific coupons or discounts when consumers are at or near your physical location.
Your Website Is Still Important – Make it Responsive
The main goal of any digital marketing strategy is to use multiple techniques (one of which is mobile marketing) to get your potential customers to take a specific action. And the majority of the time, this action will take place on your website, which means it’s extremely important that it remains consistent with your campaigns. Enter responsive web design, a mobile-friendly web construction technique that allows your customers to experience your brand across all devices.
Here are a few reasons why responsive design might be right for your business:
- Location, time and device: these are three vital areas not only to mobile marketing, but digital marketing as a whole. Responsive design caters to all of them by allowing you to present your brand experience to customers on the go, no matter what their device.
- Consistency: you don’t want your hard work to go to waste, so don’t send customers to an unfriendly website that they have to pinch and zoom to even read. Let responsive design keeps your web presence consistent across all devices.
- Human behavior: did you know that a large percentage of Internet searches start on one device and get finished on another? This is key to the understanding that we move between devices depending on location and time of day (there are those vital components again!). Responsive design helps you adapt to changing human behaviors.
These are just a few guidelines for getting started with mobile marketing and keeping pace with your always-on-the-go customers. Contact WSI Connect for further information or a consultation on how to begin implementing effective mobile marketing strategies.
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