If you’re struggling to integrate a mobile strategy into your digital marketing efforts, you’re not alone.
Many countries are seeing consumers completely skipping PC ownership and purchasing smartphones as their first means of digital interconnectivity. Rapid growth of mobile capabilities has left many marketers in the dust, creating a problem when it comes to utilizing them as marketing tools. So how do digital marketers leverage your mobile strategy to provide a personalized customer experience?
Start by taking a serious look at your company’s current marketing strategy to understand ways mobile can support your customer journey through all channels. Mastering mobile may take time, but your journey starts with evaluation of your current marketing channels, then applying a mobile strategy to enhance your digital marketing efforts.
Mobile marketing simply takes your integrated marketing communication tactics and optimizes them for delivery through a smartphone. A mobile strategy combines various marketing channels with mobile to connect with your customers and generate leads through these channels. Which channels you focus on depends on where your customers spend their time and what type of content they’re consuming on mobile. The following shows multiple digital marketing channels you should consider including in your mobile strategy.
Once you’ve determined which of your current digital marketing channels make the most sense to use in your mobile campaigns, start implementing them in your mobile strategy. Here are our top tips to help you develop a personalized mobile strategy:
Identify Your Mobile Users
Find out if your visitors are frequently accessing your site on mobile devices and what specific devices they are using the most. Knowing the specific devices being used to visit your site will help you prioritize your optimization efforts towards them. We also recommend seeing what pages your mobile users are viewing the most often and what actions they are taking on each page in order to improve your site’s customer journey and user experience.
Test Your Mobile Strategy
Just like you test your site in multiple browsers, you should also test your mobile campaigns on multiple devices for a consistent and seamless user experience. We also recommend identifying a group of your loyal customers to test new mobile marketing campaigns. Mobile requires a lot of customization, and a short testing phase where users can provide feedback will help you detect any issues before you launch mobile marketing campaigns on a larger scale.
Measure and Track Your Mobile Campaigns
Make sure you set measurable goals to help you determine if your mobile strategy is actually working. For example, if you’re launching an SMS marketing campaign, your initial goal may be to build your opt-in subscriber database. You can also track and nurture your mobile campaign leads using your existing customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation platforms.
Customize Your Content for Mobile Devices
While mobile devices have capabilities beyond desktop, there are also several limitations when designing on a mobile-friendly site. It is important to create content specifically for a small screen. Shorter content formatted into bitesize chunks is ideal for the mobile experience. Include bold headings, bullet points, numbered lists, and visuals to break up longer paragraphs.
Don’t make your mobile users scroll through endless content to find exactly what they need, and don’t hide your content behind multiple clicks. If you have forms on your site, make sure they are condensed and use pre-filled options to minimize scrolling and typing. Also, use clear call-to-action buttons to encourage visitors to click through to your most important conversion points. Button size is especially important on mobile devices so users can easily tap on their phone screens when navigating your site.
Take Advantage of Mobile Features
Enhance your mobile experience by using features specifically for smartphones, like the click-to-call functionality. You can also provide QR codes that lead to targeted landing pages to drive users to your website and increase conversions. Use these features to address the needs of your mobile users and make it easy for them to access your digital touchpoints.
Try SMS Marketing
A recent study revealed 39 percent of businesses use some form of text messaging to communicate with customers today. Despite the rise in texting, SMS can be a difficult mobile marketing channel to get right. Here are a few quick tips to help you get started with SMS marketing:
- Keep your messages short. After all, SMS stands for “short message service.” We recommend limiting your messages to about 150 characters.
- Use SMS for alerts and allow users to sign up for alerts on new products/services, upcoming promotions, appointment reminders, etc. Also, remember to only send messages to those who have opted-in to your lists and watch your frequency, so your leads don’t receive a lot of unwanted texts.
- Include short codes and auto-reply keywords. These features allow customers to send your company SMS messages. Short codes are a sequence of numbers customers can text to receive promotion codes, offers, or rewards. Auto-replies are specific keywords customers can send in response to your texts. For example, they can text “CONFIRM” to verify an appointment or “COUPON” to receive a coupon link.
