There are 6.6 billion smartphone users in the world. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could turn a fraction of those people into your loyal customers?
It is possible with the help of mobile marketing. Marketo describes it as a “multi-channel, digital marketing strategy.” This tactic allows you to reach your customers through their mobile devices.
Close to 60% of the global internet traffic comes from mobile. This means 6 out of 10 people browse the Internet using their smartphones. Additionally, 47% of consumers shop through their phones than in-store.
You can use mobile marketing to amplify your other digital marketing tactics.
For instance, an e-commerce customer can receive email and SMS notifications about the status of their parcel. For startups, mobile marketing comes in the form of push notifications. It’s like whenever your phone dings whenever someone sends you a message via Messenger.
Thus, you must know the best mobile marketing practices if you want to reach out to your clients and customers through their smartphones.
But what constitutes an effective mobile marketing strategy?
Mobile Marketing Components
Mobile marketing is not limited to mobile apps and SMS or push notifications. It is considered mobile marketing if you build brand awareness, generate sales, and connect with your target market through mobile devices.
You might be surprised that you are already doing some of the mobile marketing components listed in this post.
Mobile-friendly Websites
You can say that a website is mobile-friendly if it automatically adjusts its size depending on your screen size. It also makes browsing different web pages, reading through texts, and tapping a button easy.
Suppose you are wondering how your business can adopt mobile marketing. In that case, we suggest that you prioritize having a mobile-friendly website. That’s because it allows people to reach out to you, even on the go.
Another reason is that Google favors mobile-friendly websites. This is due to their mobile-first indexing, wherein the search engine uses the mobile version of your website for indexing and ranking. If your website is mobile-friendly, it is more likely to rank high on search engine results.
Luckily, web design templates these days are mobile-friendly. Hence, you do not have to make a mobile version of your website from scratch.
SMS and MMS Marketing
Another component of mobile marketing is SMS and MMS marketing. It allows you to deliver a message straight to your customer‘s phone. SMS marketing is a 160-character text message, while MMS marketing has a 1,000-character limit and lets you send GIFs, audio files, or short videos.
SMS marketing costs less, but MMS marketing has more impact at 70% conversions.
Nonetheless, you do not have to choose which tactic to implement between the two. That’s because virtually every smartphone can support SMS and MMS messages. Hence, you can use both to connect with your customers.
Mobile Ads
Mobile ads are any ads you run through your target market‘s mobile devices. Doing so supports your entire online advertising campaign, boosts brand awareness, and generates more revenue.
Creating a mobile ad is almost like implementing the four types of online advertising. However, it requires the use of mobile-friendly ad assets.
Mobile Apps
When done right, mobile apps allow you have profound engagement with your target market. It is like having an environment where people can interact with you.
Do you need to be a startup to have a mobile app? Not necessarily.
You can build an e-commerce app so customers can buy your products on their phones. If you are a mortgage broker, you can develop an app where borrowers can apply for a loan using their mobile devices. There are even apps for meditation, listening to music, monitoring your budget, and more!
The key here is identifying the goal and purpose of having a mobile app. You must also consider whether you have the resources to develop an app. Otherwise, you can hire a technology company like ArisAlex to build a mobile app for your business.
7 Mobile Marketing Best Practices That Can Drive Leads and Sales
Knowing the mobile marketing components gives you an insight into what tactics you can implement:
- You need a mobile-friendly website
- Build a direct relationship through SMS and MMS marketing
- Make your brand omnipresent by running mobile ads
- Use your mobile apps to instill brand loyalty
However, mobile marketing can also undermine your business if you do not know how to do it effectively. That said, we have listed seven mobile marketing best practices that can help you drive leads and sales to your business.
Understand Heuristics
Developed by Jakob Nielsen in 1994, heuristics are ten usability principles used to evaluate how the software looks and whether it is easy to use. This is important when developing a mobile app since it is primarily designed for user interaction. Hence, creating an intuitive app is a must.
Some of the heuristics principles to keep in mind are:
- Your mobile app’s design should match the real world. Use concepts, language, and conventions that are familiar to your users.
- Give your users control and freedom. This means they should have the option to undo a mistake or cancel an interaction.
- Follow platform and industry conventions. Users’ experiences with other products and software set their expectations. Maintaining consistency ensures that words, situations, or actions mean the same for your users, whether using your or your competitor’s app.
To learn about heuristics, you do not need to be a mobile app developer. Sure, you can hire an app development team or use tools to build an application. But knowing these principles can help ensure that people will keep using your mobile app.
Make Your Message Clear and Concise
Implementing mobile marketing often means you have a limited number of characters to work on. Hence, your message must be clear and concise. Offer immediate value and have a direct call-to-action. That way, your target market knows what your message is and the next steps they should take.
Keep Your Web Design Simple
Here’s the thing: Mobile internet users view your website on a small screen. This means that a cluttered web design will make it challenging for them to navigate through your site.
Opt for a clean and minimalist web design. That’s because few design elements mean faster website load speed.
You can also reduce the number of menus on your website. Use the hamburger button to reduce the amount of space your website menu occupies on mobile.
Prioritize Website Speed
According to Google, your website’s bounce rate increases to 123% if it takes ten seconds to load.
Bounce rates are the number of people who visited your website and bounced off immediately without doing anything. Your bounce rate does not affect your website’s ranking on search engine results. However, it indicates that your website elements prevent site visitors from becoming clients or customers.
To avoid that, you must ensure that your website is loading fast – especially on mobile. You can increase your website’s loading speed by doing the following:
- Compressing your images and CSS. High-resolution photos and large codes make your website take a while to load. That said, you can use tools that can compress and reduce the size of the images you upload on your website without compromising quality. Some tools let you reduce CSS code size to make your website load faster.
- Use Accelerate Mobile Pages (AMP). It is a web component framework spearheaded by Google and Twitter to improve a website’s performance on mobile devices. It restricts HTML/CSS and JavaScript and stores your website in a cache, enabling your web page to load almost instantly.
- Check your web host. Your website can impact your website’s performance. That’s because your web host plan has limited bandwidth, determining how much data it can transfer. If possible, consider upgrading your plan to move to a more reliable web host.
Address Privacy and Security Concerns
It is usual for people to be wary of receiving messages from random phone numbers. As such, it is best to optimize your mobile content and ensure that your business is well-represented.
For example, when sending an SMS, you can use your brand name as the sender’s name instead of just a plain mobile number. It would also be best to refrain from asking for sensitive information like a customer’s address or credit card information via SMS. Instead, you can include a link to a registration form in the message. That way, they can check whether the content came from a legit business and rest assured that you are not doing anything shady.
Choose the Right Mobile Ad Format
Some people may find banner ads on mobile distracting, but they would not mind watching a 5-second video ad. Thus, being mindful of what mobile ad format to use is vital.
The key is using analytics tools to identify which mobile ad format brings ROI. What key performance indicators you should monitor will depend on the nature of your business.
For e-commerce businesses, you may want to measure the sales you get from your mobile ads. If you are a startup owner, it is crucial to measure your cost per install (CPI) and cost per loyal user (CPLU). For B2B businesses, monitoring your return on ad spend (ROAS) is recommended.
Always be Testing
Just because your website or app looks good on one Android device does not mean it will be the same for another.
Whether it is your website, online ad, or app, it is crucial that you test the mobile marketing component you are using on different devices. Doing so validates its appearance, performance, and functionality across different devices.
Sure, you cannot test on all devices in the market. However, you should test on small, medium, and large-sized Apple and Android devices.
10 Recommended Mobile Marketing Tools
Mobile marketing allows businesses to connect with their clients and customers anytime, anywhere. It also makes interacting with your business more convenient. Hence, it is undeniable that mobile marketing has revolutionized how we do business.
That said, we have listed ten tools you can use to implement an effective mobile marketing strategy.
TinyPNG
TinyPNG is a browser tool that reduces the file size of images you upload to your website. It selectively decreases the number of colors in an image, reducing the bytes required for storage. Thus, boosting your website‘s loading speed.
Toptal
Toptal is an online CSS minifier and compressor tool wherein you copy and paste and minify the CSS code with a click. The goal is to remove the unnecessary codes without changing how the browser executes or renders them. The faster it is for the browser to run a code, the faster your website will load.
Omnisend
If you run an online store, consider using Omnisend. It is a user-friendly dashboard that lets you simultaneously send SMS and email notifications to your customers. That way, you can always engage your buyers wherever they are.
Klaviyo
Similar to Omnisend, Klaviyo is an SMS and email marketing platform. It allows you to send personalized and targeted SMS to your customers. It also lets you create different opt-in forms to build your SMS marketing list.
Google Ads
If you want to get your business in front of your customers wherever they are, consider running mobiles ads on Google Ads. You can run mobile-friendly text and image ads that will appear whenever someone types a relevant keyword while googling on their smartphone.
However, one of its noteworthy features is that you can run “call ads.” These are Google Ads that showcase your business’s phone number and encourage people to call you with just a click.
Audience Network by Meta
Meta‘s Audience Network allows you to use Facebook‘s targeting capabilities, ad formats, and management tools to run ads on various mobile apps within Meta‘s network. This means that your mobile ads will no longer be limited to Facebook news feeds, expanding their scale and impact.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics lets you monitor whether you are receiving online traffic from your ads and if you are successfully turning these visitors into customers. You can also link it to your Google Ads account to streamline your ad monitoring process.
Localytics
Localytics allows you to understand your mobile app users. That way, you can improve your mobile app experience, drive engagement and loyalty, and turn your mobile app marketing efforts into ROI.
Android Studio
Android Studio is what you need if you are looking for the fastest way to develop an Android app. This tool lets you create Android app layouts, optimize the size of your app, simulate configurations, and write better code.
OutSystems
OutSystems provides the tools for businesses to develop, deploy, and manage cross-platform mobile apps. It is an all-in-one platform that lets you create a scalable, standalone application or an app that enables you to streamline your business operations.
Expand Your Market Reach with Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing allows you to build brand awareness, drive engagement, and communicate directly to your clients and customers. This explains why 69% of ad spending will likely focus on mobile platforms by 2022.
That’s because mobile marketing can amplify your other digital marketing strategies by being omnipresent. It can be through a mobile-friendly website, timely SMS and MMS message, relevant mobile ads, or a user-friendly mobile app.
But to execute your mobile marketing strategy effectively, you need to keep the following best practices in mind:
- Prioritize website speed
- Keep your web design simple
- Make your message clear and concise
- Address privacy and security concerns
- Choose the right mobile ad format
- Understand heuristics
- Always be testing
You now know what it takes to have an effective mobile marketing strategy; it is time to plan how to use it to expand your market reach and boost your sales.
