Kelly Keller, Negosentro | The mobile world today is changing so fast even the savviest marketer can struggle to keep up. Every day, new mobile tools are launched that can save time and money and improve marketing campaign results. This makes it all too easy to focus on incorporating mobile tools to the exclusion of analyzing how each tool can serve the greater goal.
In this post, learn five tips for navigating the world of mobile marketing to ensure the tools you choose to incorporate are those that have your brand’s best marketing interests at heart.
Tip 1: Choosing the mobile platforms that best reflect your ideal customer.
As the sheer number of mobile social platforms continues to grow, any marketer would be forgiven for feeling pressured into maintaining a presence everywhere and all the time. But different platforms appeal to different user groups, and some may be less ideal than others for reaching your ideal customer demographic.
Rather than opening a profile on every new social tool that comes along, study the analytics for each tool and analyze how well each matches up to the customers you are trying to reach. Then choose your tools accordingly.
Tip 2: Staying continually engaged with users who interact with your brand through your chosen mobile toolkit.
If there is one thing customers simply cannot stand, it is a brand that refuses to respond to social messages. A recent study showed that customers expect daily response to any social posts, especially those that pose a question or highlight a concern or critique. Failure to receive a timely response can rather swiftly turn a loyal customer customer into an ex-customer.
This is another argument for choosing your suite of mobile marketing tools with care. There are only so many hours in the business day, and it is critical to allocate your time accordingly. One is using bulk SMS messaging services that may have been forgotten but is still very much in effective use today. Along with too many tools comes the responsibility for too much monitoring, which can actually work against your brand’s best interests when communications fall through your time-crunched cracks.
Tip 3: Continually monitoring your marketing campaigns for mobile friendliness.
Mobile friendliness is not just a must for optimal ranking in Google browser search engine results. It is increasingly becoming a must for users, period. Recent research suggests that a full 11.7 percent of internet users will use only their mobile device to browse the web.
So if a prospect or customer decides to visit your brand online, what will they see? Will they be able to browse and buy on a small screen smart device with ease, or will it be a struggle that they won’t readily tackle again? The answers to these questions lie in continual monitoring and testing of your mobile presence, including viewing on different devices using different operating systems, browsers and screen sizes.
Tip 4: Ensuring applicable deals and coupons are available via mobile.
The average consumer today is always eager to conserve more of their hard-earned cash. Coupons offer an easy and popular way to do this. Given today’s mobile use statistics (see Tip 3 here), ensuring your brand’s coupons and deals are available via mobile platforms is paramount for competitive success.
In the last four years alone, mobile-based coupon “clipping” and use has risen from just 12.3 million coupons to 53.2 million coupons. That is a lot of mobile coupon redemption! If coupons can give your brand the competitive edge in the checkout line, you definitely want yours to pop up when your customer is surfing the web looking for last-minute deals.
Tip 5: Encouraging your marketing staff to take their work home with them.
The beauty of mobile marketing tools is that they are portable. Now, thanks to nifty apps, you can check the status of an in-progress email marketing campaign, respond to followers on social media, send and receive texts with customers and colleagues, welcome new loyalty program followers and so much more – all while sitting in traffic, standing at the subway stop or waiting in line at the store.
The word “mobile” means it goes wherever you go, which means your staff can have their flextime and telecommuting time and still easily meet your department’s productivity goals.
By taking a big picture look at all the world of mobile marketing has to offer your brand, you can select the tools with the highest usability for your marketing goals and maximize the results you reap from the use of each.
