Mobile marketing can be an essential part of business planning, but understanding it and creating the right marketing plan can be tricky. Take the time to research the different codes, applications, techniques and formats for each marketing tool before you make the decision on which to use. The following steps will be invaluable to you as you attempt to craft a successful mobile marketing plan.
Get your website mobile friendly! Take a look at your website on a mobile device. Don’t like what you see? Most don’t until you get your site onto a mobile-friendly platform. Look at your content management system to see if it offers a mobile plugin, or talk to a local digital advertising agency to build a solution for you. Either way, it is important to make your site look professional and engaging on mobile devices!
A great mobile marketing tip is to ask your customers to share their videos. Customers use their mobile phones to capture real events that happen in everyday life. This is a great opportunity for you to build a community and to help engage customers by having them participate in your marketing efforts by submitting their own videos.
Track your QR codes. There are several free sites online that allow you to keep track of the amount of traffic your QR codes produce. Use this to help you determine which marketing tactics are working best for you and eliminate those that are not quite as effective in attracting new customers.
Putting a QR code on your print ads can help you appeal to tech savvy customers. This easily allows smartphone users to access your coupons and website. Put these codes everywhere, including fliers, catalogs, and even your own business card. With a QR code, an interested customer can instantly find out more information about your products and services.
When creating advertising for the mobile web, you must ensure that the content is compatible with a majority of different mobile browsers. This is important to consider because you do not want to inadvertently restrict customers from being able to view your content. Stick with the major phone manufacturers and double check to see if there are any restrictions that the service providers may have in place.
You should be focusing on all your stats as a mobile marketer and not just a few popular ones. Measure your entire success, meaning your repeat usage, bounce rate, unique visitors, and your more popular stats like downloads, opens, activations and registrations. You want a feel for it all here.
When you are setting up your marketing adds for cell phones, they must be cross-platform compatible. Every one has a different phone, and you don’t want to end up cutting off some people from seeing your advertisement just because of the phone that they have. Your customers will not switch phones, though they may switch from your product to one that they see all the time on their phone.
If you are going to send out text messages to your customers, do not send them out at hours that would be inconvenient for the clients. Stay away from sending anything out in the evening or early morning. Also, do not send anything on Sundays or holidays unless it is extremely important and relevant.
Be sure to lay claim to your business in each social network’s location pages. In mobile marketing, it’s all about location, location, location. Smart mobile devices, all have location awareness built into their systems, so users can tell what is around them. Make sure they can find you by claiming your page on sites, like Foursquare, Facebook Places, Gowalla and Google Places.
Inform folks that you have special promotions on the mobile-marketing platform. Use fliers, business cards and social media to get the word out about your mobile-marketing campaign. Blog about your promotions and urge people to fire up their favorite smartphones to get in on the exclusive fun, coupons and discounts.
To pull in new customers, send out SMS messages. In your message, ask people to sign up for your text messaging list. You can send them updates about sales, new products, or other services periodically. Texting is becoming more popular by the day, and it’s a great way to send out information. Keep the messages short, and don’t send them out too often, otherwise many potential customers will cancel the service.
Do not send your messages anytime. People will not appreciate getting a message from you in the middle of the night. Perhaps you can even divide your customer base by time zones so that you do not send a message at an odd hour. Avoid sending messages during holidays, except if it is relevant to your campaign.
Design email campaigns that are friendly to mobile devices to increase your success. Let them click a phone number to make a call instantly. If you send them a website link, make sure it looks good on a phone. Many people check email on mobile devices, so use this to your advantage.
On your website and your mobile site, have links to your social networking and other affiliated sites. Company videos on YouTube, Twitter page, Facebook’s page, Google+ page, or Foursquare any resources that you can provide to your customers to give them more information about your business and who you are.
Build your legal marketing database the right way. Don’t just harvest mobile phone numbers or buy databases. Have your targets subscribe to the marketing texts you are about to send. It can be done by asking them to send you a text with a specific message such as texting a keyword like SHOP to your short code (for eaxample 22345). This way you have proof they want to hear from you.
Understanding and properly utilizing mobile marketing is crucial to the success of any modern business. This empowers you to determine which techniques are best suited to your specific business needs. A good place to start is with the tips above.
