In the US, 90% of adults have a cell phone, and more than half of those are smartphones. That means the question of whether or not you need a mobile marketing strategy has been answered; the real question is What are you doing to reach the huge segment of the population that never leaves home without some sort of mobile communication device? It is estimated that mobile e-commerce will generate over $50 billion in sales for 2014, making it vital to guarantee shoppers a smooth, unified brand experience across all devices and platforms.
For example, users are spending more time accessing emails from their mobile devices, making it important to optimize emails for mobile devices. However, while over 60% of emails are opened on a phone or tablet, very few of them are actually read; they are simply skimmed and either deleted or set aside to be read later on a desktop or laptop.
Also, many social media platforms are more likely to be accessed from mobile devices compared to desktop computers. Pinterest users are 92% mobile, and Twitter users are at 86%. Facebook is 68% mobile, while Tumblr users are only 46% mobile. Most social media marketing must therefore be done with the portable communication device in mind.
To get the most out of your mobile marketing strategy, the first thing you should do is establish clearly-defined goals. Decide, for example, if your content should be crafted to drive traffic to either your website or your storefront – or both. Will the messaging be specific to a limited-time offers, or engage the customer in a more general narrative? Picking one or two key objectives will provide your efforts with focus.
Next, create a mobile app that is both useful and appealing. Consider offering two versions; a free general-use edition plus a premium presentation with specialized content and enhanced features. Once your customers download either one enroll them in a rewards program or provide discounts that encourage them to use the app, keeping your brand in the front of their minds.
Adapt your email tactics to reflect the mobile trends. Flashy and colorful looks great on a computer, but takes a long time to load on a mobile device. Too much time, and your email doesn’t make the read later pile. Instead, make email messages concise and compelling. “The job of every sentence in your email is to get the recipient to read the following sentence. Move your customers from sentence to sentence and you’ll have a conversion faster,” recommends Igor Faletski, CEO of Mobify.
Along with these trends, it’s important to realize that four out of five shoppers use their smartphones and tablets to make purchases as well. Therefore not only your marketing strategy but online shopping portal needs to be mobile friendly as well, and your app should provide a seamless check-out process along with engaging content.
What shoppers do not use for making purchases, however, is social media. While these platforms are amazing for generating awareness and engaging consumers in real-time dialogue, very few sales actually result from these channels. Less than one percent of digital sales occur through social media sites in fact, so any goals designed to measure the effectiveness of social media marketing should use different guidelines than just sales.
Making the most of a mobile marketing strategy requires more than just nicely rendered landing pages. You need to think about who’s using the device, what activities they’re engaged in, and what they are thinking about. All of this will depend on factors such as what device the user is interfacing with and their location. Even though the same people using home computers are also using mobile devices, they are behaving differently and seeking different experiences depending on which device they are using.