Studies show that 50% of the world population is using the mobile and almost 10 new mobile users added to this every second.
Mobile phones just haven’t changed the way we interact and communicate but also the business communications and marketing in the recent past, particularly smartphones. This is a growing phenomenon world over, and India is leading the way from the front.
Smartphones & India
Do you know how many people use smart mobile phones in India? According to 2019 estimates, there are 374 million smartphone users in India. That constitutes a staggering 13.8% of world smartphone users. By 2022, it is expected that the number will reach to 442 million.
What is Mobile Marketing?
Mobile marketing is defined as an online marketing technique aimed to deliver the marketing message to the targeted audience over the mobile, tablet devices through Email, Social media, Website and Mobile Apps.
With smartphone and internet penetration, mobile emerged as the best marketing channel for a variety of reasons. As for the businesses, the chance to reach out to customers and prospects even when they’re in the drawing rooms or on the go, with a personalized message opened exciting new opportunities.
How Does Mobile Marketing Works?
Mobile marketing mostly consists of ads which appear on the smart mobile phones in a variety of ways including as SMS, Email, Push notification, social media and apps. Many types of ads can be run targeting the mobile device. These include Location-based Ads, App-based marketing, In-game mobile marketing, QR Codes, mobile image ads, mobile search ads and SMS. Also, depending on the type of social media, each has its own variety of ads catering to different industries to reach different social groups.
However, the availability of large population over smart mobiles alone doesn’t guarantee marketing success. In fact, the bigger the reach the more challenging it is to target right. Social Media platforms have different ads to handle this problem.
Following are the best practices to take the most out of mobile marketing:
1. Identify the objective
Have clarity about what objectives you would like to achieve with mobile marketing. It caters for a variety of objectives to be accomplished ranging from creating a brand image, promoting the increased footfall at the store to increasing the online sales. Having clarity helps to come up with an appropriate strategy. Also, for different objectives, you can undertake different marketing campaigns on different channels.
2. Define the right target
Once the objectives are clearly demarcated, define your target. Define who’s your most prospective customer and what are the best means to reach them. If you are a real estate company, you need to target differently. Likewise, if it is a fashion store, it needs to target the different age group in a different way. Whether your target audience is urban or rural, youth or adults, you need to clearly identify to target better.
3. Choose the right channel
As said before, mobile marketing carried through ads of different kinds over SMS, Email, Social media and through the apps. You have to choose what would be the right channel for you to market. For the brands aiming to target the youth, social media offers the best reach. For the more informed, Email best suits to engage. For the not well-connected regions, SMS offers complete solutions. Choose the right channel depending on the target.
4. Understand the buyer
Understanding the buyer’s persona is important to design the best mobile marketing campaign. Factors like prospect’s age, education, job and sources of information play an important role in one’s purchase preferences. More information like the challenges he/she faces or types of content one would prefer gives you the required insights into the individual to design the right campaign. The great advantage of mobile marketing is it provides for easy access and tracking of all these required data to create a user persona.
5. Make your site mobile friendly
Building a mobile-friendly website has become inevitable nowadays for the huge traffic mobile is driving. Not only that, even search engines have made it a factor for the ranking as well. Compared to PCs, mobile provides for a far better interactive experience. Tapping into that with the right UX will have a great impact on each of the sales stage. Hence the mobile-friendly site.
6. Create mobile friendly content
Mobile friendly content is another important practice for best mobile marketing. Remember, your target audience is reading your marketing message on a small screen, you have to get to the point quickly. Also, there’s space issue and the attention span is less compared to the website. Hence, content shall be concise yet compelling.
7. Add a personal touch to local searches
Usually, local searches frequently occur from the mobile. To take advantage of the local searches, submit your website to Google My Business. Also, you should ensure that company detail address, working hours, contact details are clearly visible on your site.
8. Design all your marketing campaigns focusing on mobile
Instead of running the same campaigns designed for websites, get all the campaigns mobile optimized, particularly banners, newsletters and Emails. Email remains a key marketing strategy even for mobile marketing. If you can design a responsive email which rightly fits in the mobile screen, there is a guarantee that your message gets across for sure.
9. Make it easy to share
Last but not least, make sure that your website URL, content on the site easily shareable. People are well connected through the mobile to near and dear. The sharing phenomenon has taken all of us by surprise. When a customer finds the best service, product or offers, it is irresistible to stop sharing with friends and family. So, don’t lose on the free word of mouth, or mobile to be precise.
10. Monitor the KPIs
One of the important aspects of mobile marketing is to continuously monitor the KPIs. One needs tangible results to affirm the success of marketing whether in terms of customer engagement or acquisition. Also, in the highly connected scenario, effective customer service too can be considered an opportunity to market.
