8 Mobile Marketing Strategies
Consider your business objectives, target audience, and related metrics before you set the course for your mobile marketing. Here are eight mobile marketing strategies.
- Search is king. Findability for those on-the-go is critical, whether you’re a retail store, restaurant, hotel, or other establishment. Your customers must be able to find you. Remember, this translates to search and related services like Yelp and Google Maps. According to eMarketer, mobile search advertising is projected to grow almost 60 percent to $295 million in 2011.
- Social media connects on-the-go. Social media interaction extends beyond the computer. This underscores the fact that participants perceive social media as a real-time, as well as an asynchronous, communications channel. Further, mobile devices are perfect for checking in with your social graph.
- Can you join me here? Location-based services (aka LBS) focus on the major players – Facebook Places, Foursquare, and Gowalla. But don’t overlook other related services like Yelp and Google Maps. Think beyond just mayorships to get customers to check in. What can you do to add to the fun and entice your customers back to your establishment? Think about mobile coupons and text messages as well.
- Buy, buy mobile. Mobile commerce isn’t just calling your spouse to find out what brand of toothpaste to buy. Mobile enters the promotional arena with the ability to take comparison shopping to the black belt level. (Don’t take my word for it, check out this data.) With the current frugal mindset, customers may leave products on your shelves and head for your competitors’ stores if their products and related information are better.
- Text’s not just for kids anymore. Text messaging has extended its reach, partially due to children forcing parents to become text savvy as well as to lower costs and be able to multitask without others hearing you. That said, it’s still the primary way to reach teens. As a marketer, it’s useful for time-critical updates like bank accounts and deal-of-the-day or Groupon-type notices.
- It’s an app, app world. With growing smartphone options and other mobile devices (namely the iPad), apps (aka mobile applications) are exploding. This is a double-edged sword because the challenge is to break through the clutter. While apps provide a potential source of revenue, bear in mind that free apps are growing exponentially faster. (Here’s more app-related data.)
- Mad men go mobile. Jump into mobile advertising to take advantage of the strong response rates and branding opportunities this newer medium provides. Now’s the time to grow your base while it’s still new. Mobile’s sure to aid local display advertising that BIA/Kelsey predicts will reach $803 million by 2014.
- UX rules. UX is tech talk for user experience. Translation: you need a mobile website. While your Internet-optimized site may be accessible via a smartphone, your on-the-go audience may not find it tolerable!
