The Only Mobile Marketing Guide You'll Ever Need
“Hey, do you know any inexpensive marketing agency that could help me promote my small business?”
“Well! You already have one in your hands— your smartphone!”
“Huh!!?”
“Mobile Marketing—that’s what I mean!” ;)
Sounds interesting, isn't it? Everyone is looking for the simplest and cheapest ways to promote their business. What else could be better than endorsing your business through a smartphone?
It’s simple, effective, and inexpensive. Moreover, it’s an all-in-one bonus package that satisfies all our tricky requirements.
It’s crystal clear that mobile marketing is the new marketing future. Nevertheless, we have already stepped into the era of mobile marketing.
So, if your business still hasn’t adopted it yet— then you are already missing tons of opportunities. And, we sure don’t want that to happen, isn’t it?
So, let’s read this comprehensive guide on mobile marketing that will cover every single aspect associated with it. Let’s check the table of the content we’ll cover further:
- Understanding Mobile Marketing
- Experts Definition on Mobile Marketing
- A Brief History of Mobile Marketing
- Mobile Marketing Components
- Need for Mobile Marketing
- Working of Mobile Marketing
- Different Kinds of Mobile Marketing
- Advantages of Mobile Marketing
- Major Issues that Mobile Marketing Resolves
- Strategies and Tactics of Mobile Marketing
- Best Practices for Mobile Marketing
- Tools Associated With Mobile Marketing
- ROI of Mobile Marketing
Let’s begin
Understanding Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing is the practice of promoting your business to customers who use mobile devices. It also provides potential users or consumers with tailored location and time-related information through smartphones.
Further, it enables people to receive precisely what they require when they require it, as well as how they may attain their objectives.
Moreover, you can check the graph below that signifies how much consumers spend their time on their smartphones. And, this trend is constantly booming. This determines the importance of mobile marketing for businesses.
Experts Definition on Mobile Marketing
We have listed mobile marketing definitions according to experts:
According to Margaret Rouse
“As a promotional activity designed for delivery to cell phones, smartphones, and other handheld devices, usually as a component of a multi-channel campaign.”
According to Andreas Kaplan, Professor of Marketing at the ESCP Business School
“Any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device.”
According to Wikipedia
“Marketing on or with a mobile device.”
In simple words, the way your target demographic and customers interact with your brand is tremendously evolving. And, it is because of mobile phones. People use their smartphones to access your website, check your emails, and shop at your store.
Furthermore, you have to analyze how to position your business in sync with mobile marketing that ultimately reaches your audience.
Remember that any marketing strategy that overlooks mobile marketing today is doomed to fail.
A Brief History of Mobile Marketing
The origin of mobile marketing may be traced back to 2003 when the first commercial mobile SMS and shortcodes were introduced.
In 2005, Nike and Pontiac were the first two companies to initiate SMS ads. Both organizations realized that mobile marketing was the way of the future because consumers were so infatuated with cellphones at the time.
In 2007, 2.4 billion people used SMS all across the world. In 2010, Apple released the first iPhone in the United States, and QR codes were integrated into mobile marketing, ushering in a new age in marketing.
Mobile marketing had expanded to a $14 billion global industry by 2011.
By 2013, Android and iOS had gained in popularity. And, this was the era when applications were growing popular and smartphones were beginning to supplant traditional phones.
By 2014, the number of people using mobile phones had surpassed the number of people using computers, and individuals were using their phones to access the internet.
Apps now account for 89 percent of mobile time, with websites accounting for the remaining 11%. This is the primary reason why 71% of marketers consider mobile marketing to be essential to their organization.
Brands that do not have a mobile marketing plan should reconsider their marketing strategy, as they are losing clients by the second.
Mobile Marketing Components
Mobile Marketing is not just limited to text messaging and smartphone apps. Let’s check the following other components associated with mobile marketing:
Websites:
Mobile-friendly clearly means that information appears on your mobile screen without any errors, constant zooming, heavy loading, or other aspects.
Moreover, you have to make sure to offer users a consistent and engaging user experience (UX). In case, your website has any issues that affect mobile-friendly elements. Then you will lose crucial customers. Therefore, mobile UX has an impact on every stage of the purchasing process.
SMS and MMS Messages:
Customers can receive messages using Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Message Service (MMS) interactions. It is, nevertheless, critical to use these channels wisely.
Discover the most effective methods for communicating your message to your customers as rapidly as possible. Also, understand the cardinal rules for a successful campaign through videos, product alerts, advertising, or reminders.
Applications:
If you have the right strategy, mobile apps can help you develop deep interactions with your customers.
Moreover, review several sorts of apps to see if a mobile app is the most effective way to achieve your engagement, acquisition, and conversion goals.
Responsive Design and Landing Pages:
Responsive design is quite critical when it comes to communication. It's just a technique for proactively transforming webpage content for optimal viewing on any smartphone.
Also, landing pages are an important component. If a user receives a mobile-friendly email but is routed to a non-mobile-friendly landing page. Then, your audience might grow frustrated and leave the site. And, you will lose an important consumer.
Need for Mobile Marketing
Undoubtedly, mobile marketing plays a major role. However, we have discussed the need for mobile marketing in detail. Let’s learn
1. Wider Reach:
Nothing can beat a mobile phone when it comes to reaching out to your target demographic. The majority of users check their phones throughout the day.
Although the average person spends 90 minutes per day on their phone. Interestingly, the average time is getting longer day by day.
There is no other approach for reaching out to your customers as straightforward as this. You can also contact them at any location and at any time. All you need is a well-planned mobile marketing strategy.
2. Interaction and Connection:
When you interact with a user via mobile, you're establishing your brand in the same category as their friends and family.
Furthermore, customers are more likely to connect with consumers that develop a one-on-one relationship with them.
3. Cost-Effective
When compared to other marketing methods, mobile marketing is incredibly cost-effective.
For example, running a TV commercial is much more expensive than running an SMS campaign or developing a mobile-friendly website. As a result, you'll generate more revenue over time.
4. Instant
The best medium to choose when you want to reach your customers instantly is — Mobile Phones.
According to one survey, 90% of text messages are read in just three minutes, while another study found that text messages have a 98 percent open rate.
Mobile marketing not only has a large reach, but it also delivers the message quickly. Unlike email marketing, which has a response rate of only 6%, text messages have a response rate of 45 percent.
Ultimately, text messages are delivered and read instantaneously, and the consequences for brands are astounding.
5. Customer Engagement
Customers generally tend to trust those brands that offer a pleasant and positive mobile experience.
According to research, 61% of individuals form a favorable opinion of a business when they are able to access the website from their mobile phones without difficulty. Moreover, if your website isn't mobile-friendly, 30% of visitors will quit it.
6. E-Commerce (Mobile)
Mobile devices are preferred by consumers for making transactions. Interestingly, mobile phones account for more than 44% of all internet usage. Approximately 78% of mobile phone searches ended in a purchase.
No doubt, mobile commerce is booming, and it's projected to take over eCommerce in the near future.
Working of Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing works on the same principle that other forms of marketing do. The only difference is that your customers utilize their mobile devices to locate and contact your company.
In a word, you use their mobile devices to target, connect, and engage with them.
Smartphones, tablets, and gaming consoles are the most popular devices for connecting to the internet right now. In fact, smartphones are used by 80% of internet users.
You must be reachable because your clients are already on their phones. So, here's how mobile marketing works in detail:
1) Build a mobile marketing campaign
The first and foremost step you must establish is to set your objective or goals. Next, comes other aspects such as target audience, running mobile ad campaigns, delivering coupons, gathering mobile audience leads, and so on.
Here’s a popular mobile marketing campaign. Check out:
The Kan Khajura Tesan campaign by Unilever Hindustan is a fascinating mobile case study. Their objective and goal were simple and straightforward:
“With consumers in key regions of rural India lacking access to television and uninterrupted electricity, Hindustan Unilever needed to get creative to earn more share of voice.”
Unilever developed its own mobile entertainment channel, which could be accessed via a business phone number (toll-free).
As a result, more than 20 million people heard an advertisement for three Unilever brands, and Unilever gained 8 million new customers in just six months, bringing the total number of subscribers to more than 12 million.
2) Identify the target audience and market for mobile devices
Your mobile marketing campaign's target market and audience can be the same as or completely different from your company's intended audience. Although, you need to do detailed research to filter out both.
However, the most straightforward technique is to create buyer personas. The best way is to ask questions, conduct surveys, polls and interviews.
Ultimately, when it comes to acquiring data about your present customers, Google Analytics and Alexa are two smart places to start.
3) Mobile-Friendly
In case, you don’t have a mobile-friendly website— then you should take action right now. Having a mobile-friendly website will provide access to your target audience to learn more about your business.
Moreover, you're wasting money and losing consumers if you don't have a mobile-friendly website. You might even irritate your viewers.
If they have an unpleasant mobile experience with a website, more than 57 percent of customers will not suggest it to others.
Although a mobile responsive website isn't required for your mobile strategy. Also, it does provide various advantages, like improved organic search rankings, faster load times, and increased user engagement.
4) Incorporate
Lastly, make sure your business activities are in sync with your mobile strategy so that your customers get exactly what they want. Incorporate your social media accounts, customer service, digital content marketing, and other commercial endeavors.
Different Kinds of Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing is a sort of marketing in which— a mobile phone is used to communicate with a target audience. Following we have listed several types of mobile marketing. Let’s learn:
SMS Marketing
It is a marketing method in which companies send short text messages to potential customers. SMS marketing is not only the oldest kind of mobile marketing, but it is also the first of its kind.
Moreover, SMS marketing became popular among both large and small businesses due to its low cost compared to other marketing tactics.
MMS Marketing
Some businesses prefer to employ MMS marketing instead of sending brief text messages.
With the help of films, sounds, and visuals, this method seeks to make a stronger impact. Moreover, MMS marketing strives to have the same impact as television commercials.
When comparing MMS and SMS marketing, the former is the more expensive option. Furthermore, some mobile phones are unable to receive MMS messages. There are still a lot of phone types that can just receive SMS only.
Application Marketing
Companies are now riding on the trend of producing applications after the establishment of the Android Play Store and the iPhone App Store. App development is a company's technique of connecting with its clients.
Additionally, some apps are available for download at no cost. However, some apps are not free. There are numerous apps accessible in the App Store and Play Store nowadays.
Mobile Internet Marketing
Mobile Internet marketing is a method that entails the usage of cell phones and the internet (www). It's the standard web pop-up ad.
On the other hand, Mobile internet marketing may entail the optimization of a website to make it mobile and search engine friendly.
Moreover, the majority of individuals currently connect to the Internet via their phones. Mobile internet marketing is also the fastest-growing mobile marketing technique.
Barcodes
These are barcodes that allow mobile phone users to quickly acquire any information by simply utilizing their phones.
Mobile Games
Along with mobile apps, companies have begun to develop several forms of mobile games that players may download directly to their phones.
However, different marketing messages are embedded in the downloaded mobile games, enticing consumers to visit the company's website or the game developer's website. During the mobile game soft launch developers are able to gather patterns, trends, and behavior from the mobile game’s first users, this is key in establishing a high conversion rate.
Advantages of Mobile Marketing
Following is the list of advantages of mobile marketing. Let’s check:
1. Easy and Simple to Use
Mobile marketing isn't a complex process. It's very basic and straightforward to use. Whether you have a little or large company, mobile marketing would be quite advantageous to you.
2. Share Message to Wider Audience
Nowadays, reaching a larger audience is not difficult. Furthermore, if you want to expand your company, you need to utilize mobile marketing. It will help you finally reach a wide audience from all around the globe. On mobile devices, sharing content is a simple operation, and your message will reach them in no time.
3. Mobile eCommerce
Mobile eCommerce is gradually becoming more popular. Check these statistics:
- 81 percent of people conduct online research prior to making a purchase.
- More than 74% of them use their smartphones for online purchases.
- 67 percent said they use shopping applications.
These figures imply that in the near future, Mobile eCommerce will surely rule the market.
4. Tracking and Analytics
When it comes to gathering user data, mobile marketing is extremely effective. We can virtually instantly track user data. To gain a deeper knowledge of apps, we can track user data such as in-app behavior.
We also use this information to trim and improve our mobile app. It is preferable to have an app that is personalized to the needs of its users over one that does not. We can better understand user behavior by tracking their data. Our decision-making process is aided by an understanding of user behavior.
5. Strong Influence
Without a doubt, social media has a significant impact on people. Furthermore, microblogging services such as Facebook, Twitter, and others have placed power in the hands of regular people. On these social media sites, everybody's free to share their thoughts and opinions.
As a result, we could claim you've been influenced. It doesn't matter if you don't have a large following; your viewpoint is important. It can also have an impact on your friends, family, and others on your contact list.
Moreover, you have the ability to shape or affect their product impressions. This powerful influence is frequently employed in mobile marketing to recommend or promote products.
Major Issues that Mobile Marketing Resolves
Mobile marketing is distinctive in that it targets individuals right where they are, in real-time. Furthermore, as more and more purchases are begun via mobile, it is an essential component of any marketing strategy.
1) Even after producing a huge amount of mobile traffic, the conversion rate is low?
Improving your responsive site and landing page design, as well as tailoring content for mobile, are some strategies for assessing and enhancing your mobile marketing efforts.
Furthermore, organizations must improve their mobile conversion rates to future-proof their marketing approach.
2) How can I know that my audience is mobile-audience?
Practically everyone has access to a mobile device in some form. As a result, understanding— how, why, and when— they utilize their mobile devices is crucial. If you take the time to establish buyer personas, you'll be able to reach out to your target audience regardless of where they are.
3) How do I know if I'll be able to incorporate a mobile approach into my marketing strategy?
The first stage in developing any successful strategy is determining what success entails. Bring all of your stakeholders together to develop a mobile marketing strategy, evaluate current activities (if any are in place), and suggest development needs.
4) Both content and website are not responsive?
As part of building a mobile marketing program, make sure your website, emails, and landing pages are all responsive. You may also give a seamless and easy-to-engage-with experience using responsive design. It will aid to attract and gain users.
Strategies and Tactics of Mobile Marketing
Here is a list of crucial mobile marketing strategies and tactics that we recommend you begin with!
1. Geofencing
It builds location targeting for your marketing strategies using radio frequency identification (RFID) or global positioning systems (GPS).
You can use geofencing to create a barrier around a certain area or radius, such as a city, state, region, country, or zip code. It will then deliver advertisements to mobile devices entering that zone.
You may use geofencing to swiftly target customers on the go in a region near your business. Moreover, then your ad would then surface in the apps on their mobile device. It would further urge customers to visit your business or take advantage of a special deal.
2. Social Media Marketing
“Mobile devices accounted for 83 percent of all social media visits in 2019”
Paid and organic social media marketing is a feasible mobile marketing approach. It is simply because the bulk of people only scroll or browse their feeds on their smartphone devices.
In addition, your social media marketing strategy should include Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok Snapchat, Waze, LinkedIn, and other platforms.
When using mobile social media strategies, you should consider offering compelling content with distinctive pictures or videos to enhance engagement and interaction on your posts. Additionally, make sure to optimize your post content for mobile.
3. Local Listings
For local businesses wishing to expand their mobile presence, getting listed on free listing services like Google My Business is critical. It is because customers will check your business via local listings on their smartphones.
To increase your incoming business from mobile users, make sure your name and business details are up to date on mobile-heavy networks like Yelp, Bing, and Facebook.
If you have proper company information, such as your name, address, website, hours, and contact information, mobile users will have a better chance of reaching you.
4. Mobile Search Advertising
As previously stated, you may boost your search engine marketing efforts by making them mobile-friendly. Also, you'll have to make sure your PPC advertisements appear when they do.
You can also use the ad extensions that are available for mobile. The Google Search infrastructure also allows us to use Call Ads, which only appear on devices that can make phone calls (i.e., mobile phones and most tablets).
5. SMS Marketing
Sending text messages to your consumers or prospects is referred to as SMS marketing. An SMS perfect campaign to reach your target client. And, because individuals are more likely to sign up for text offers from brands they like.
Also, persuade your clients to sign up for your company's SMS messaging. It will help you to build your community.
Moreover, you may send links, updates, and fresh specials to your potential clients with SMS marketing. However, this keeps you on the top of mind with your audience.
However, it also advances them along the buyer's journey, getting them closer to taking critical activities such as completing a purchase or making a reservation.
Best Practices for Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing follows the same best practices as other marketing methods, but there are some that are specific to mobile advertising. The most important are as follows:
1. Determine your Objectives:
Your messaging strategy will, as always, be determined by your objectives. To effectively engage your mobile contacts, you must personalize your message to your goal. It should be implemented whether you want to reach new prospects, nurture current leads and consumers, or enhance customer happiness.
2. Make a plan for your campaign:
Determine your target demographic, devise a plan, and generate campaign content and messaging. Many factors, including layout, shortcodes, keywords, and message delivery schedule, will be determined by your target audience.
3. Create Mobile Database:
You need to promote keywords for your campaigns across numerous marketing platforms. It will help you to persuade consumers to sign up for special discounts, promotions, and information.
Moreover, you can use email, print, social media, and websites to promote your shortcode. Make the opt-in procedure simple and transparent so that people can easily join up.
4. Send promotional texts:
To convey relevant content and attract clients' interest, use MMS, SMS, and RCS (rich communication services, which might contain high-resolution video or photographs, file sharing, or forms)
Furthermore, your communications should be branded so that your customers identify them and their message services don't disregard them as spam.
5. Evaluate the efficacy of your efforts:
To track the efficiency of your marketing activities, use key performance indicators (KPIs). These will include the website's click-through rate, number of opt-ins/opt-outs, sales or revenue earned, and your mobile marketing campaign's landing page.
Further, your mobile marketing automation platform will assist you in tracking the campaign's success.
6. Test and Evaluate
Try it out and see what happens. To evaluate audience reaction, test whatever variable you can, including fresh material, the time of day messages are sent out, and audience segments.
Furthermore, your mobile marketing automation software will keep track of each variable's remarkable success and automatically update your opt-out list so you don't keep contacting unresponsive customers.
7. Use Easy and Simple Keywords:
Keep your keywords short and sweet. The greatest approach to keywords is to keep it brief and basic. Avoid using special characters, and select keywords that will not be changed by autocorrect.
Pro Tip: To catch people's attention, keywords like "sale," "discount," and "special deal" should be used.
8. Maintain Transparency
Set explicit expectations for customers so that they become aware of all aspects. Moreover, they should be aware of the campaign's goal and how frequently they will be contacted.
Also, remember to provide opt-out information in every correspondence. These methods will assist clients trust that you will not spam their phones.
9. Deliver Incentives
Offering incentives is one of the simplest and most efficient ways to encourage individuals to sign up for text messaging campaigns. Also, sales and coupons are excellent choices.
Moreover, Coupons are very useful for increasing brand knowledge and loyalty. Customers might also be enticed with fresh product previews or material that is appropriate to their interests.
Tools Associated With Mobile Marketing?
You'll be able to complete tasks on time and to perfection if you have access to the right mobile marketing tools. Here's a rundown of some of the most beneficial tools for you.
AdMob
Google's official mobile ad network. It's utilized to make money from apps. AdMob should be used by mobile marketers that want to monetize their apps or advertise them within other apps.
Localytics
Localytics is compatible with all types of apps and networks. Features such as CRM, smart targeting, campaign management,Real-time analytics, multichannel engagement, and more are included in this platform.
Mixpanel
Mixpanel is suitable for both mobile and online analytics. Moreover, you may compare retention rates and engagement differences between mobile and online users and perform analysis.
Countly
Countly is a mobile app analytics tool that is free and open source. It works on all Android, iOS, Windows, and BlackBerry smartphones and apps.
Moreover, it not only provides mobile analytics, but also online, game, and IoT analytics. It's a business's all-in-one analytics tool.
Yelp
Yelp generates 72 million unique mobile visitors and 25 million unique app users. A mobile device is used for almost 74% of Yelp queries.
Tune
It works with a variety of mobile ad networks to monitor, evaluate, and track marketing campaigns.
Furthermore, it provides a variety of marketing solutions, including in-app marketing, marketing intelligence, attribution analytics, app store analytics, and more. Ultimately, the marketing console is an extremely useful tool for mobile marketers.
ROI of Mobile Marketing
With purchasers increasingly adopting mobile to investigate potential purchases, a well-executed mobile marketing campaign can result in a direct boost in revenue.
- Mobile marketing is becoming more popular. According to Google, almost half of all B2B queries are now made on smartphones. According to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), by 2020, that percentage will have soared to 70%.
- Buyers who are researching products are reached through mobile marketing. Mobile users are increasingly buying. According to Google's study, ‘best’ comparison searches have climbed by 80% in the last two years.
- Most sales include mobile marketing. More than 60% of B2B buyers say mobile played a big influence in their most recent transaction (BCG, 2017)
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Final Takeaways
Yay! You finally reached the end of this comprehensive guide. We have listed some crucial points for your reference. Let’s revise them:
- Mobile marketing is the practice of promoting your business to customers who use mobile devices
- You have to make sure to offer users a consistent and engaging user experience (UX)
- Review several sorts of apps to see if a mobile app is the most effective way to achieve your engagement, acquisition, and conversion goals
- When you interact with a user via mobile, you're establishing your brand in the same category as their friends and family
- Mobile internet marketing may entail the optimization of a website to make it mobile and search engine friendly
- Your social media marketing strategy should include Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok Snapchat, Waze, LinkedIn, and other platforms
- You need to promote keywords for your campaigns across numerous marketing platforms. It will help you to persuade consumers to sign up for special discounts, promotions, and information.
- Offering incentives is one of the simplest and most efficient ways to encourage individuals to sign up for text messaging campaigns