“Increasing mobile device adoption by consumers is spiking mobile conversion rates and boosting eCommerce. Mobile-friendliness is the new digital mantra”
The audience-specific targeting of televised advertising, the sensory feel and visual appeal of magazines, the reach and communication power of social media, and the throbbing vitality of a live event are popular arenas witnessing aggressive marketing wars. But there’s a game-changer standing tall above every other medium. Mobile marketing, far from losing the war, is on track to become the most influential and effective medium for brand imaging and product promotion.
Companies bubble-wrapping their marketing strategies in social media metrics and content management are risking marginalization if they ignore the fast-changing, consumer-friendly mobile technology revolution. New generation marketers, increasingly aware of the smartphone’s power and potential, are unleashing innovative mobile marketing strategies to bask in the limelight of consumer adulation.
Three revealing statistics highlight why mobile marketing is not plunging to irrelevance but is growing in importance:
Mobile coverage: Nearly 70 percent of Americans (257.3 million citizens) own smartphones, which testifies to a mobile penetration of 74 percent of American households. Statista.
Mobile usage: Smartphone users are opening their mobiles at least 52 times daily, and more than half the survey group say the mobile is the chosen device for browsing the internet. Deloitte.
Mobile ad-spend: Mobile marketing accounts for 43 percent of combined media ad spending, and is on track to surpass traditional media marketing to reach $141.36 billion ad-spend by 2020. eMarketer.
For the modern-day consumer, the mobile is the golden gateway to the internet and social media, enabling more in-depth and purposeful exploration of brands and services. How can any company afford to ignore such an audience and its most important medium of communication?
Phone validation specialists at Byteplant emphatically state that mobile marketing is alive and kicking, and it’s a medium that can redefine customer experience and ease the customer journey through the sales funnel as never before.
7 strategic reasons why CMOs can’t ignore mobile marketing
Chief marketing officers (CMOs) of leading enterprises agree that mobile marketing is an investment promising rich rewards. There are 7 core strategic gains that no company can afford to ignore.
The power of knowing your audience first-hand
The aggregation of consumer data gives the company reasonable control over three aspects of consumer interest.
- You know who is viewing your content.
- You realize how consumers perceive the product.
- How, when, and where consumers get to see your content.
You gain a significant marketing advantage using mobile-specific tools, growing in sophistication, that target audiences with greater clarity.
The ability to match your strategy to the intent of driving the consumer
The modern consumer uses mobiles to scour the net and to research and evaluate products before moving to purchases. The words “best” and “review” are entering the lexicon of mobile searches for high-value items and mundane categories of consumer goods.
For companies, this is the moment to drive mobile marketing strategies that match the intent of mobile searches at each pivotal moment of the research, evaluation, and purchase stage of the marketing funnel.
The capacity to react quickly to consumer responses and feedback
The ubiquity of mobile use makes it easier to track the consumer’s response anytime, anywhere. The consumer, exercising choice, can either open your email or ignore it, and respond to a text message or reject it.
From a marketing perspective, the analysis of results offers consumer behavior insights that are useful in improving the overall campaign strategy.
The potential for building relationships and anchoring brand loyalty
Unlike the TV-Radio-Billboard advertising and social media outreach campaigns that spray the message over a broad cross-section of the population, mobile marketing forges a direct and personal link between a brand and the user.
For the company, it’s an opportunity to build a relationship where there’s a great deal of personalization of the marketing message. The consumer has the choice to accept the brand and nurture brand loyalty if the relationship is intent-fulfilling.
The advantage of grabbing the consumer’s undivided attention
Over the decades, the average attention span of the consumer has declined to eight miserly seconds, less than that of a fish. The mobile device has a smaller screen where short bursts of the content may be inadequate to retain consumer interest.
The modern mobile marketing strategy presents shorter, snappier content with decisive calls-to-action relying more on images and videos to ignite consumer interest.
The springboard for getting your content to go viral
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the top three social media pools attract maximum eyeballs, and much traffic emanates from mobile devices that are within arm’s reach of consumers. Marketers find themselves sitting on a goldmine of booming business. All they need to do is to focus on making mobile-specific content short, pithy, and shareable through social media buttons.
The reward in welcoming mobile-friendly features
Following the Google search engine algorithm update of 2015, mobile-friendliness became a critical search engine ranking factor for businesses. With Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools, you can redesign and optimize your site to load quickly and provide a more pleasing user experience to consumers. In time, you enjoy the rewards of booming business through higher search ranking.
The migration from desktop to mobile is complete: What matters is what you’re doing about it
When mobile searches were overtaking desktop searches, Google search algorithms began to favor websites that deliver a mobile-friendly user experience. A person’s physical separation from the desktop at home or in the workplace is no longer an issue. The smartphone is readily available to satisfy any desire to catch one’s fancy.
There was a quantum shift in consumer experience from the website to the mobile screen. Web content marketers were targeting keyboard warriors. Now the same marketers are busy chasing consumers favoring touch screen mobile devices.
7 mobile marketing techniques that dominate digital marketing campaigns
The transition from desktop to mobile has led to the adoption of mobile marketing techniques that now dominate digital marketing campaigns. The future of your enterprise could depend on how you leverage these niche-dominating techniques.
Responsive web design is the key unlocking the mobile consumer market
Artistically and visually, your website might be the Michelangelo of cyberspace, but if the site looks awful on a mobile screen, consider yourself cut off from a vast audience of mobile users.
According to Google, around half the people that browse the web say that they seldom return to a website that’s slow to load or becomes difficult to navigate.
The success of the mobile marketing strategy rests on the solid foundation of a mobile-friendly website. What this means is that the content fits the screen without requiring side-to-side scrolling or zooming, and pages load under 3 seconds.
Email marketing services are becoming mobile-friendly
Email is continually evolving as a direct marketing tool, ideal for building more profound, more meaningful customer relations. With over three-quarters of consumers accessing their emails through mobile devices, mobile-friendly email marketing has taken center stage.
Companies are busy optimizing emails for mobile screens as this is possible through responsive web design best practices:
- Placing the CTA prominently in the upper fold of the message where the consumer can click with minimum navigation.
- Optimizing the size and number of images to enable higher load speeds.
- Replacing links with buttons so that consumers can reach pages using their fingertips.
- Optimizing the landing pages to fulfill the intent of the mobile user.
By automating email services, companies are improving marketing campaigns, analyzing consumer feedback and usage stats, and creating better emails targeting the audiences’ intent.
The Short Messaging Service is the most direct and compelling gateway to the consumer
Nearly 80 percent of the North American population use SMS as their primary mode of communication, and there’s a 98 percent likelihood of consumers viewing an SMS. An SMS, being direct and personal, is an efficient form of advertising if you take the time and energy to create a compelling message.
Three steps to an excellent SMS experience:
- Limit the text to 160 characters without losing brevity.
- Focus on alleviating a customer pain point and don’t harp on the brand.
- The call-to-action should be precise and prominent, explaining why you’re contacting the consumer.
From teens to adolescents to adults, everyone has a mobile within arm’s reach. With an SMS, you have a cost-effective way of delivering a personal message in a space where the consumer is most likely to view the message.
Multimedia Messaging Service, the smarter avatar of SMS, delivers a more value-enhancing consumer experience
The fact that 98 percent of mobile devices are capable of handling multimedia messaging is enough incentive for marketers to deliver a value-enhancing experience to consumers using images, audio, videos, and GIFs. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, an audio clip speaks volumes, and a video can be a visual extravaganza.
With a playground of 1600+ characters, you have the freedom to package brand elements more attractively in your message. Campaigns flying on the wings of MMS appear to be more engaging for consumers, and opt-in rates grow by 20 percent. If you provide share buttons in messages, consumers are eight times more likely to share their experiences with others through social media.
If you compare with plain text messaging, coupons and promotional campaigns that use rich media are better at driving impressive results. Would you not be happy with message opening rates topping 97 percent and ROI riding the stratosphere in four figures? That’s the power of MMS.
Analytics is the main reason why mobile marketing is making significant inroads in consumer markets
The advantage of mobile marketing lies not in the thrill of the well-oiled campaign but in your ability to aggregate and analyze consumer response data to ascertain whether the campaign is on track and delivering results.
Your capacity to track consumer behavior and analyze conversion data sharpens if you use Google Analytics. You get to probe a clutch of marketing metrics including page impressions, product engagements, CTRs, email opening rate, text opening rate, and conversions.
Mobile analytics provides 5 fundamental data points that help you reinvent your campaign:
- Trace the source of traffic; whether it is a website, a platform or a mobile device.
- Know what draws the attention of the consumer within your website or app.
- Observe the website or app features that are getting the highest pings.
- Identify bottlenecks where people are getting stuck and ascertain the reasons why they’re pogo-sticking elsewhere.
- Catch errors within the app usage on specific devices.
If you are using Google Analytics extensively for your website, pay the same kind of attention to your mobile site and app and re-energize your campaign with better insights on consumer behavior.
The Mobile Application is the linchpin of the mobile marketing campaign
The mobile application, the software that you customize to run on any site, platform, or mobile, is an extension of your brand. Using the app, you engage directly with the target audience, encourage conversions, and provide eCommerce support.
Mobile app marketing presents four approaches that encourage customer retention:
- In-app messaging: You personalize and deliver messages within the app; messages that may act as in-app navigational aids, promote new content or explain new features.
- Push notifications: You propel messages on the user’s screen after securing the user’s opt-in. Push notifications are a simple and effective way of posting reminders and promoting offers with deadlines.
- Loyalty programs: Different categories of free merchandise, substantive rewards, dazzling coupons, or exclusive previews of premium products can be selectively used to retain regular customers and encourage revisits to the store by previous customers.
- Customer surveys: Very useful in telling you what the consumer likes or dislikes about the app.
Apps are potent bridges convincing consumers that you listen to them and care for their needs through regular product updates, bug fixes, and roadmaps. Happy consumers reward you with their loyalty for years to come.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the face of mobile marketing
The job of the marketer is never easy, and unraveling consumer data involves an unsatisfactory mix of guesswork, instinctive understanding, and intuitive analysis. Predictions could be way off the mark. AI changes the whole game.
AI equips mobile marketers with tools that are more efficient at probing performance through the lens of predictive analysis. We have algorithms with the capability of discerning patterns in consumer behavior relating to app usage.
After analyzing consumer browsing behavior, the machine learning algorithm profiles the user and matches products, services, or content that closely mirror the real intent of the user. AI has already taken over programmatic advertising, where ads targeting consumers appear before the right user at the right time.
Once the mobile marketer understands the intent and purchasing behavior of the user, what follows is full customization where ads can be tailor-made for specific audiences. This kind of precision targeting of consumers is more likely to spur conversions and reactivate dormant sales funnels.
Conclusion
Is mobile marketing dead? The answer is an emphatic no. The reason is not hard to track. The modern consumer is shifting away from desktop computers to mobile devices and is spending half the internet time browsing the net through the smartphone.
Marketers are changing gears to focus on mobile app optimization and mobile-centric strategies so that marketing campaigns deliver a richer user experience. Your website’s mobile-friendliness is the new paradigm prepping the stage for future marketing wars.
The choice is clear; you lose the marketing war as a static observer from the ringside, or you become a high-value digital marketer with powerful mobile marketing skills, ably fighting marketing wars and nurturing your brand with confidence.
Author bio: Agnieszka Podemska is an SEO specialist and content strategist at MiroMind, an SEO and Digital Agency. An avid blog reader and tech enthusiast, she likes to share her insights with others.
