How to Use Mobile Marketing for Growing Your Business
2020 has seen the emergence of eCommerce as an enormously lucrative business avenue. With the right strategy, any company can benefit from mobile marketing.
As far as marketing efficiency goes, businesses will need to adopt new ways to engage their audiences. There’s always content and search engine optimisation to help you attract the right audience, but when it comes to gaining a competitive advantage in your market, you will have to go beyond the usual audience touchpoints.
Promoting your brand via mobile devices should be an integral part of your online marketing activities. You will want to appeal to potential customers who rely on smartphones to look for and buy the products they want. Just like any other marketing channel, mobile outreach needs to be done right. After all, it’s an investment that pays off handsomely when you give it the right amount of time and resources.
1. Use SMS Notifications
Consider this an “old school” way of reaching out to mobile users. While most people use messaging apps to communicate, eCommerce stores are increasingly relying on SMS to inform current and potential clients about upcoming promos or offers. This is because SMS has a higher open rate compared to emails and people seldom receive emails nowadays. While they don’t allow much customisation, SMS messages are cost-effective and they can be integrated with other channels, such as email and chat.
2. Optimise your website for mobile users
A website that can be easily viewed through tablets or smartphones is a necessity, given that most sales transactions nowadays happen via mobile. Figures from Statista.com showed that roughly 34.5% of all e-commerce sales in 2017 was done through mobile devices. The figure is expected to grow with the introduction of more sophisticated devices, so not having a mobile-optimised website could affect your ability to compete for sales.
A website that can be easily viewed through tablets or smartphones is a necessity, given that most sales transactions nowadays happen via mobile.
When it comes to creating a website that functions seamlessly on smaller screens, it’s important to pick mobile-friendly themes. You will have to test several themes before you pick the one that gives added value to your mobile audience. Apart from the theme, you also need to pick a hosting service that allows for minimal downtime without sacrificing functionality. Lastly, you can use optimisation tools such as Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages feature.
3. Contextualise your content
If you are a small business looking to engage potential customers within your immediate community, using content that aligns with the needs of the community provides you with powerful leverage for attracting new business.
Taken on its own, local marketing opens you up to numerous opportunities for closing more sales. With mobile marketing, you get added benefits, so make sure to include homegrown content when designing a mobile-optimised website. You can use images of local landmarks or information about the culture and lifestyle of the people living in the community. More importantly, opt for a highly navigable design so people won’t have to spend more time trying to find information they need to learn if you are a legitimate player in the local business scene.
4. Develop a mobile app
Creating custom apps are particularly useful for eCommerce businesses. These apps shorten customer journeys and enhance customer experiences, although they require a considerable amount of time and money to develop.
Nonetheless, you will find that building your very own mobile app can help a lot in promoting your brand and making it easier for customers to browse and pay for the products they want. Be sure to make it easy for customers to make payments through a responsive portal. Once you have developed your app, you can make this available for download through the Google Play Store or the App Store.
5. Include videos and voice search
Mobile marketing has certainly come a long way. From receiving SMS messages about discounts and new offers, consumers are provided with more options to engage brands through their smartphones. Embedded videos are now easier to access through mobile-optimised sites. Look towards animated infographics or slideshows that highlight new products or share tips to your audience.
Aside from videos, voice-search should be added to a brand’s mobile marketing arsenal. Some people find it convenient to voice out their search queries instead of typing them. For your brand to reach out to the right audience, it pays to consider the natural flow of speech that people use when searching by voice. The trick here is to target long-tail keywords for specific products.
The future of marketing is literally in the hands of consumers. For your business to continue thriving, it only needs to make itself accessible across different mobile devices.
