6 Must-Do Mobile Marketing Tactics
Are you always thinking that mobile marketing is the next big thing but maybe you can put off taking action until next year? Before you decide, consider that globally roughly one billion people will be connected to the mobile web and half of all Americans will own a smartphone by the end of 2011 according to Google. Given this high growth of web-enabled mobile devices, now’s the time to start your mobile marketing strategy. (For a fuller understanding of the U.S. mobile market, here are 56 mobile marketing facts.)
To get your mobile marketing on track, here are six basic steps.
1. Understand your goals for your mobile marketing. Answering these questions will help you formulate a framework.
- What type of business are you in?
- How do your competitors use mobile marketing?
- What are your major business goals such as acquire new customers and increase sales?
- What do you want to achieve with your mobile marketing strategy?
- How does it integrate into your overall existing marketing plans?
2. Know your target market. In particular, you want to focus on the smartphone owning segment’s needs?
- Who is your audience? If you’ve developed marketing personas, use them as a starting point and elaborate on the smartphone owners.
- Where is your audience when they use their smartphones to gather information about your firm? Are they looking for something specific while they’re out and about? Are they filling time between other activities? Or are they multitasking while they’re watching television?
- What are they’re needs that they’re looking to your to fulfill? Do they only have a smartphone (ie-no landline)? Are they shopping in a competitor’s store? It’s critical to consider what functionality they need from your mobile platform.
3. Mobile websites are a must-have due to small screens, awkward input, and download delays of mobile devices. Bear in mind that a regular website is too big and awkward to view and navigate on a mobile device.
- Optimize for speed. On a mobile device, download time matters. Average mobile response time is 4.26 seconds according to Gomez
- Focus on core mobile functions to meet on-the-go needs. Less is more for mobile. Streamline your website for fewer features and eliminate the extraneous stuff. Concentrate on what your viewers want to do?
- Show me the way with simple navigation. Think user-friendly. Include breadcrumbs, filters, and jump links to support your navigation.
- Make fields and touch targets larger. Your goal is to reduce traditionally higher error rates on mobile.
- Let them scan. Make sure viewers can get the information quickly. Use full headlines not truncated ones. Keep information scent going.
- Don’t forget to include your branding. Since users are pressed for time when they use mobile, keep your branding consistent so that they can easily tell where they are. Ensure that viewers recognize your mobile site. Keep brand elements consistent.
- Encourage action. Don’t forget to include a call-to-action and targeted promotion code. Think in terms of phone calls, mobile phone number collection, etc. Don’t forget a link to main website.
4. Mobile search. With searches on mobile devices with full Internet browsers increasing fourfold over the past year according to Google, the question is: Can you find me now on your device? The chances improve if you use a separate optimized mobile campaign compared to mobile CTR on a combined mobile/desktop campaign. Google reported that advertisers experienced an 11.5% average increase in mobile CTR for separate, targeted mobile campaigns. As part of your mobile search strategy, include local content, local directories (such as Yelp and Google Hotspot) and other sites where prospects may be searching for geo-targeted information like Zagats or OpenTable.
- Develop a separate, targeted mobile search campaign. This makes your search marketing program more effective for mobile users.
- Separate your mobile marketing budget. This way you can determine your bids for specific words. Given that there are less words per page, your bidding strategy will differ.
- Test keyword performance. Since mobile search often occurs closer to purchase or other action, it’s critical to test your keywords and track their performance.
- Create mobile advertising copy. By segmenting your mobile search terms, you can use specific mobile call-to-action such as click-to-call.
5. Mobile email. Since email is where mobile users spend most of their time according to research from The Nielsen Company, adapt your email communications, at least in a targeted way, to reach your on-the-go audience.
- Focus on strategic mobile email opportunities. As with any form of mobile marketing strategy, consider what information your prospects need when they’re away from their desktop computers. Think timely, must-have information. Among the specifics, recommends focusing on are e-receipts, travel alerts and location based services and coupons. From a marketer’s perspective, the benefit is that these are messages recipients are looking and often go to their main email account.
- Think about how and where customers are and will interact with your communication. What mobile devices are they using?
- Develop short, easy-to-consume messages. Include a clear call-to-action which can be a click-to-call. Don’t forget to incorporate a phone number so that users can contact you. Also, use trackable promotional codes.
- Make your email communication mobile-consumption friendly. Use a single column (320 pixel wide), increased text size (18-22 pixels), and larger buttons. Provide a link in the mobile email version to help users who want to see the larger email message.
- Create relevant, action oriented subject line. Focus on the first 35 characters and 90 characters in the sub-header.
6. Track your progress. As with any marketing program, it’s important to track your results to see how it’s doing and where you can make improvements. Monitoring results are easier when you determine your metrics in advance. When implementing a mobile marketing strategy, use dedicated, incoming phone numbers to be able to monitor responses to mobile websites, search results and email. As part of your marketing efforts, start to collect prospects and customers cellphone numbers and permissions to text and call customers. Among the elements to consider are:
- Count the number of impressions from mobile Web sites. Also, where possible, track completed transactions. Bear in mind that a prospect who clicks to call may expect to complete the transaction on the phone.
- Track your mobile search advertising results. Specially, check which words are performing well and which aren’t. Does your copy need to be tweaked? Also, monitor your organic search results.
- Assess tailored email results to see if there are improvements in performance.
Now is the time to start testing mobile marketing since the smartphone ownership is fueling growth of the mobile Internet. To ensure that you can continue to meet your prospects and customers needs regardless of where they are physically, a mobile marketing strategy is important as is building your experience as this option expands.
Have you added mobile marketing to your overall marketing mix? If so, what worked and what didn’t work as well for you? Please share your experiences in the comments section below.
Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen
Photo credit: Matthew Oliphant via Flickr
