7 Steps to Create Fail-safe Mobile Marketing Strategy

Before diving right on the topic let’s first see What is Mobile Marketing. And after that, we will discuss what is a mobile marketing Strategy?

Mobile marketing is an extension of digital marketing. It focusses on reaching a target audience on their smartphones, tablets, and/or other mobile devices. The ways to reach are via websites, email, SMS and MMS, games, social media, push notifications, and apps.

Mobile is disrupting the way people consume content on those tiny devices and engage with brands.

Everything that can be done on a desktop computer can now be done on a mobile device.

Even mobile devices have more features than desktop computers nowadays.

Nowadays mobile phones are used for pretty much everything, like:

Replying to an email
Visiting a website
Reading content
Watching videos
Chatting with someone
Taking a picture/video
Sharing videos and pictures online
Live video sharing
Staying connected with friends through calls
Locating the position of a mobile user through GPS
Finding a place through Google Maps
Accessing Social Media
Booking tickets
Doing Banking and financial transactions
Shopping online
Playing online games, etc.

Below are some mobile facts to take in consideration when you plan your next digital marketing campaign:

80% of internet users worldwide own a smartphone.
Handheld devices like mobile phones, palmtops, tablets, host up to 60% of digital media time for users.
63% of Google Searches are from mobile devices.

Effective mobile marketing campaign requires the:

Understanding of your mobile audience
Designing content, graphics, videos for mobile viewing
Responsive websites to be accessed through mobile phones
Making strategic use of SMS/MMS,
Building useful mobile apps
Using push notifications, etc.

Having all of the above would help you do proper mobile marketing in order to engage your mobile audience.

How to Create an Effective Mobile Marketing Strategy

As with the Mobile Marketing Strategy, there is no One Fit All formula.

Every brand and organization will have to develop a unique mobile marketing strategy. The strategy should be based on their industry type and target audience.

Mobile Marketing is more about customization and personalization rather than showing irrelevant ads and content to the users.

Hence, when you are making Mobile Marketing Strategy you need to take into consideration a lot of things. You need to design your content and advertisements keeping them in mind to make your mobile marketing campaign successful.

Step 1 – Create Mobile Buyer Personas

Understanding your audience is the first and foremost step to any marketing strategy. And buyer personas are a valuable tool for marketers to aid in that understanding.

Buyer personas are simply fictional representations of your different types of customers.

Buyer personas typically comprise creating a profile that describes each of your target audience:

Academic background
Job description
Main sources of income
Live or professional goals
Challenges they are facing
Their preferred type of content
Their objections
Cultural Values
Geography
Demography
Role in the purchase process, etc.

Once you have your buyer persona it is easy to determine a channel and voice for your marketing messages.

When creating a buyer persona for the mobile audience you need to add a few more points like:

How much of their web usage happens on mobile devices?
Are they comfortable completing a purchase on a smartphone?
Do they prefer to shop on a mobile website or mobile shopping app?

This data can be extracted from big data reports on mobile usage.

Interesting Mobile Usage Statistics

Some interesting observations of the mobile usage big data reports include:

65% of all emails are first opened on a mobile device.
48% of users start their mobile internet sessions on a search engine.
56% of B2B buyers frequently use smartphones to access vendors’ content.
95% of adults primarily use their smartphones to access content/information.
92% of the smartphone users have 1.8 chatting apps installed on their mobile devices.
23% of mobile users have more than one device from where they access the internet.

If you analyze Google Analytics data you will find great insights about your mobile customers, their behavior, demography, interests, etc.

A simple survey with your prospects and clients can also give your insightful data about your customer persona.

A/B testing is also very useful for developing any aspect of buyer personas.

When all other factors are the same you should also analyze:

Does your email campaign has a high open-rate,
Your landing pages get more views when you send a related email on weekends or on weekdays
Or do they have more views when sent on a specific holiday or occasion?
Do your emails get more clicks and open rates in the mornings or in the evenings?
Which title or email subject line gets more click-throughs?

Both the general and specific data will help you develop audience personas that include mobile usage.

Make sure your emails are mobile optimized and you have done proper UTM tagging for recording the responses.

Step 2 – Set Goals

The key to defining an effective marketing strategy is to first decide what the outcome should look like.

Before setting up goals it is important to gather all key stakeholders together. Discuss and ask for everyone’s consent upon your mobile marketing strategy. Set goals by asking your team some questions like:

What we have done for mobile marketing until now? This question will set your starting point and do make sure that everyone is on the same page.
How are the current mobile marketing initiatives performing? This will give you answers for what is already working, what is not, and what’s not even being measured.
Discuss why you want to consider mobile marketing now.
Tell them what you expect from mobile marketing to contribute to your business growth.
Discuss your customer personas using mobile to get engage with your brand.

Step 3 – Establish KPIs

Mobile Marketing like your other marketing efforts needs to be tested and optimized.

You will have to determine which realistic, measurable KPIs define your mobile marketing campaign’s success. For instance:

Engagement: Provide content that is mobile-friendly. It will help people who are searching for information about your product, services, or industry using a mobile phone. Also, do make double sure that your website is mobile-responsive and has room to improve mobile SEO.
Acquisition: While sending emails do make sure that your emails are mobile optimized and have clearly visible and clickable buttons. This facilitates higher click-throughs. Also, ensure that the landing pages and lead capture forms are mobile optimized. This will help people easily fill out forms through mobile phones. A good idea is to allow auto-fill features in the mobile and web-optimized lead capturing forms.
Customer Service: In today’s business environment customer service is very much an excellent marketing opportunity. Ensure that your customer can reach you through any platform, whether be it social media, website, app, or mobile web. Don’t forget to include simple click-to-call buttons for smartphone users.

Step 4 – Monitor Mobile Metrics

Google Analytics can help you monitor your mobile usage of your site:

Mobile behavior data reveals how well your mobile content engages your audience.
From Mobile conversion data, you can see if some of your key landing pages still require optimization for mobile browsing.
Speed is very important for mobile browsing. So make sure to check the speed of your landing pages and website. So that your customers don’t go away from your website impatiently waiting for the pages to load completely.
Remember that readers are using their fingers to select items. Use clearly visible image buttons and keep the layout simple.
Keep forms minimal. The fewer fields, the better response rate you will get.
Make sure your images are re-sizable for different devices.
Verify that the page looks as good vertically as it does horizontally.

Step 5 – Mobile-Friendly Website

Google has changed its algorithm and it includes the mobile-friendliness of a website for the ranking factors.

Hence, you need to make your website mobile-friendly to stay at the top of the SERPs.

For search engines, “mobile-friendliness” means that:

The content fits on the screen without side-to-side scrolling or zooming.
Content loads fast so that the user doesn’t have to wait for more than 4-5 seconds.
The site returns no mobile-specific errors.

Google has even provided a free mobile-friendliness tool to help marketers examine how to best improve their mobile sites.

The most significant reason to maintain a mobile-friendly website is to create a consistent and engaging user experience.

Mobile UX has a dramatic effect on every stage of the buying cycle:

64% of mobile web users abandon pages if they don’t load within 10 seconds.
35% of mobile web users don’t make an intended purchase because the website they visit isn’t mobile-friendly.
90% of C-suite people use mobile devices to research business purchases.

Ensure your mobile user experience is as easy and seamless as possible. And this should be the primary goal of your marketing team.

Step 6 – SMS and MMS Marketing

SMS (Short Messaging Service) and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) are very powerful marketing mediums for mobile marketing. Over 13.6 billion marketing messages are sent every day. 90% of those messages are opened within three minutes, whereas the email is opened on average in about 90 minutes.

Below are some insightful statistics about SMS Marketing. You should consider this when including mobile marketing in your overall marketing plan:

The open rate of SMS is 98% compared to 22% for emails.
Text messages are 8x more effective at engaging customers.
Almost 43% of consumers make direct purchases after receiving an SMS from a brand.
Limited period offer and local store promotion messages have over 67% response than the normal marketing messages.

It’s vital to keep in mind that mobile marketing is more personal than targeting an audience through other channels.

When reaching someone on a mobile device either through email, SMS, or MMS, you are reaching that person in his/her pocket or wallet. Make sure to be personal, respectful, and clear:

People don’t want to read long texts, so keep the text under 160 characters.
Keep your text easily readable and don’t use slang or abbreviations.
Offer something of immediate value.
Make it clear who is sending the message.
Create a clear call-to-action, do not leave the customer confused.

MMS Marketing

MMS rather than SMS offers a richer media experience, you should make better use of those extra media options:

Include engaging visuals.
Tie the MMS send to a multi-channel marketing campaign.
Make the message easily shareable via social media buttons.

SMS and MMS are very personal, and thus very powerful mobile marketing options.

Make sure to handle them with tact and detailed strategy.

Step 7 – Mobile Apps Marketing

Mobile Apps have added to the convenience of the users to shop, travel, and do a lot of things.

And Mobile apps are an excellent tool for mobile marketing.

As a marketer, you should make sure the app encourages user engagement in order to build relationships and loyalty. And, of course, drive conversions.

There are mostly two ways for mobile App marketing: push notifications and in-app notifications.

Both communicate directly to your customer. So both should be considered strategic marketing channels and should be personal like the SMS and MMS marketing.

Push Notifications

Push notifications are messages or alerts like reminders, promotional messages, calls-to-action for specific events, or goals. These messages should be very highly personalized based on user profiles delivered by your app to the user.

These messages appear on the home screen of a user’s mobile device regardless of whether the user is engaged with the app or even has it open.

In-App Notifications

In-app notifications direct your user’s attention to specific actions, messages, and features within the app. They offer great opportunities for you to engage with your users.

Examples of In-app notifications are:

New app features for users.
Messages to promote engagement with specific content pieces.
Drive conversions by delivering targeted CTAs at specific levels of engagement.

Both push and in-app notifications are very effective and direct ways to reach your audience. Especially because they’ve already taken the time to engage with your brand by downloading your app.

You need to be very careful with App Marketing. Because you won’t want to lose your valuable customer with any stupidity.

Summing Up

A mobile marketing strategy is not a stand-alone effort. But it is an important part of any long-term or short-term marketing campaign. Its significance is only growing because consumers are shifting rapidly from desktop to mobile. This shift is because of the ease of information accessibility and a handy device to use.

Optimizing your marketing strategy for mobile will give your brand an edge over the competition in every way. Be it search engine rankings, user acquisition, customer loyalty, customer retention, or conversion, you will have all. Don’t wait — go mobile today!

For any help regarding the mobile marketing strategy, you can reach out to me. Just write me an email at krishan@digitoly.com and I would be happy to help.