With mobile traffic accounting for more than half of all internet traffic, it’s essential to plan your mobile marketing strategy carefully. Below are three practical steps to see it through:
1. Setting Quantifiable Mobile Goals
Whether your goal consists of increasing visitors by 30% from mobile devices in the next 9 months, or increasing mobile app downloads by 15% in the next 3 months, there are a couple of essential steps to note to ensure you’re doing it right:
- Make your goals quantifiable so that you immediately know what’s working and what is not, including an end-date that aligns with your company’s timeline
- Make your mobile goals specific by listing steps for how you plan to achieve them
- Stay committed and follow your goals through the end, even if they didn’t deliver as you had planned
2. Mobile Personas
Creating examples of potential mobile marketing personas is an easy way to define who your mobile audience is so you can market to their personalized needs. First, list out possible demographics for your persona, such as age range, gender, income, location, and occupation.
Then, make sure to give your persona some personality with psychographics:
- Where do they like to spend their time?
- What are some of their current challenges?
- What is their goal of using your mobile application or mobile-responsive website?
Lastly, give your user a voice. If they could talk what would they say? Maybe your persona would say “I wish my bank offered me an app with personal financial management tools so I can be more organized.” You can now market towards that voice and personalize a message to their specific need.
3. Mobilize Content
When you open a webpage on your mobile device versus desktop, a lot changes visually. The screen size shrinks, the content requires more scroll and if not planned properly, it can quickly become a hassle trying to engage with your website. That’s why it’s crucial to make your website mobile-friendly so you do not frustrate your visitors. Follow these mobile responsive key steps to ensure success:
- Keep all headlines short and compelling
- Use plenty of bullet formatting, so content is easily scannable and digestible
- Make information concise and effortless to sift through
- When designing mobile experience, ensure global and main navigation are easily accessible and that all content naturally fits the screen
- Confirm that every link in your content connects to mobile-friendly sites and landing pages
- Avoid heavy use of video and animations as they can severely slow down page speed on mobile devices
- Optimize for local SEO, including terms that are most searched on phones (usually consists of “_ near me”)
- Finally, make sure after these changes have been made to monitor key data through your site analytics tool. This way, you can receive real-time data on whether or not your message is producing results.
Mobile Marketing Tactics
Most people (79%) check their phone first thing in the morning and the average American looks at their phone 52 times a day. To reach this group of people properly, you must understand the different mobile marketing tactics available to you. Luckily, we have narrowed down the five most successful ones:
1. Schema
Schema is structured data, or code placed in the header tag that tells search engines about certain website content. Schema is a great way to ensure people see accurate, popular information like your location and hours or upcoming events. It can also be the difference between letting potential customers know that you are a credit union instead of a bank or a dentist instead of an orthodontist.
Schema can also help improve your rankings on highly local search terms. It uses Google, Bing, and Yahoo as indexes as it feeds them your information, making them better stand out in organic search results. Rich snippets located below the page title are also enhanced through Schema and have been proven to improve click-through rates by 30%. If you are looking to boost geographic mobile marketing, schema is a great tactic to employ.
2. Geofencing
Geofencing allows you to set a designated geographic location, known as “fence points,” which automatically serves up mobile ads to those audiences. You can even personalize those ads towards recognized (or unrecognized) devices. Past visitors’ devices will be remembered, allowing you to send them discounts when in this designated area as an attempt to lure them back. You can do so through Facebook, with their Local Awareness Ads and Google, with their Google Ads Location Targeting. Facebook allows its users to target states and cities. However, with geofencing, you can narrow that circle down to a 1-mile radius. When a person meets all of your targeted criteria and walks into your digital fence while being logged into Facebook, they will immediately receive your ad.
Google Ads allows you to select a location radius as small as 1-mile or 1-kilometer. Google includes advanced features like the ability to exclude an area in a local search. You can also place your fence near a competitive location, so when they see your offer, it makes them want to buy from you instead.
3. Remarketing
Remarketing (aka retargeting) is a cookie-based technology focused on targeting visitors who have already expressed interest in your company. They might have visited your website after clicking an ad but importantly, didn’t produce a conversion. Once implemented, remarketing tracks this user’s behavior across online websites and social media platforms and obtains more information about their interests. When you feel you have collected enough information, you can market your ads to them again, but only the ones you think will result in engagement.
Not only does remarketing give you that second chance at converting them, it’s also highly effective: 26% of customers return to a site as a result of retargeting. For marketers, remarketing is a perfect solution for audiences who aren’t quite ready to take action initially but might ultimately down the road.
4. SMS/Text Marketing
SMS/Text Marketing is another mobile tactic that can push traffic to your website or brick and mortar establishment. Over 95% of SMS text messages received are opened and read. Mobile devices are intriguing platforms to market with as they target an incredibly captive audience. Also, between the use of emojis, pictures, and polls, text marketing encourages abundant and less formal engagement with customers. To use SMS Marketing correctly, keep content brief and make sure you have a simple opt-out process, so you don’t risk the chance of your texts becoming filtered out by cell carriers.
Timing is also a crucial thing to consider when sending these text messages. Always remember what time it is in the location you are sending these messages. It may be 5:00 pm for you, but if it’s instead 5:00 am for the user, you most likely will obtain negative feedback. In addition to opt-out messaging, note that text messaging is a permission-based marketing tactic. Therefore, your messages need to be compliant with local laws and CTIA recommendations.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing has the highest ROI of all marketing channels, and because emails are is most likely to be opened on a mobile device, promotes remarkable mobile-driven traffic. To make the most out of your email marketing plan, make subject lines timely, compelling, action-oriented, consistent with the topic, and short. It’s best to keep the subject under 21 characters to generate 31% higher than average open rates. To increase engagement, make sure the content is easily readable, formatted with many bullets, has proper use of bold/underlined font, offers eye-catching visuals, includes many site links and a catchy call to action.
An effective tactic to enhance the effectiveness of mobile marketing is email list segmentation. This tactic segments your subscribers into groups based on a specific criterion (for example: new subscribers, interests, previous site activity, location, inactivity, etc.). Segmenting your emails based on these groups allow you to personalize them based on the groups’ individual needs. Segmenting your list is proven to increase your email open rates and click-through rates, while decreasing your unsubscribe rates.
Mobile marketing is key to increasing the success of your overall marketing plan and keeping your businesses competitive. For help strategizing and supporting your mobile strategy, contact us.