What you should know about mobile marketing
You need to enable your web portals to be responsive.
Agreat many organisations have jumped into the pool of mobile marketing without fully understanding the trends in the industry or having a good strategy to harness the opportunities as the number of people using mobile devices balloons. This often does not help to achieve the desired goals. This column provides a run-down of some tips on how to maximise the mobile marketing experience to increase productivity for your businesses.
The golden rule: The golden rule or the law of reciprocity can also be applied in marketing, more so in mobile marketing. In this case, it is important to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Try to see things from their perceptive. So doing, you can imagine the potential concerns that might arise regarding the campaign you are about to run. As you think of your strategies, what do you figure are the aspirations of your customers? Having all these considerations and from this vantage point, you can sell your product or service to them more effectively. Remember, content is king only when it is put in the right context. About 90 per cent of your success depends on getting this principle right.
Customised offer: Following from the previous tip, the reason you have access to the contact details of your mobile marketing target is not so that you can bombard them with irrelevant information. Make the effort to offer them mobile exclusive and customized offers.
Be mobile friendly: There is a reason it is called mobile marketing, and not desktop marketing. This means the experience customers have while visiting your site or any of your online platforms on desktop or laptop, has to be the same as on mobile devices. Mobile devices now have so much computing power, so that you can do virtually everything you do on the desktop on mobile phones and tablets as well. Therefore, you need to enable your web portals to be responsive. There are almost 150 million mobile phone users in Nigeria out of the 4.5 billion people using mobile phones in the world. As of 2015, there were 1.9 billon smartphone users globally. Going by this trend, it is estimated that the proportion of people using the internet on mobile devices will exceed those who are using desktops. It is in your best interest to give your customers the same value experience on the mobile as they would have using their desktops.
Mobile App revolution: Apps are great for business. In fact, the mobile app is one of the most disruptive digital innovations we have seen. People search app stores just as they would search the web. As apps are transforming technology, companies and advertisers are optimising apps to expand their reach as much as possible. To download a company's app is a sign of loyalty to that brand. A mobile app will go beyond providing basic information about your business location, operating hours, to engaging your audience and helping you interact with your customers.
Go global, but stay local: No matter how sophisticated your online presence is, if your product or service is meant for your immediate community, but they can't find you online, then you are missing a very key part of your mobile marketing strategy. This simple tip is aimed at making your most important audience your primary focus, when optimising your online presence on platforms like Google ads and the like. Your physical contact details, if available, should also be included with other relevant details.
Time is a key asset, use it wisely: No matter what you do, don't ever forget this precept. As you plan to run a mobile marketing campaign, timing will always remain crucial. For example, imagine a company that is sending customers messages of a special offer for umbrellas in the dry season. The campaign will only succeed in annoying the customers. The reason Black Fridays are often huge successes is because they are held close to the holiday period at the end of the year.
Is SMS dead? Think again: Text messaging is one of the most effective mobile marketing tool. Perhaps that didn't sound convincing enough; but when you think of the burden caused by the large number of emails you get in your inbox daily – most of which you end up deleting without bothering to read them – then you might begin to appreciate text messaging as a mobile marketing tool. SMS can be used to send reminders for events or meetings; it could also be used to share tips on a particular subject. There are a number of other ways text messaging can be very useful.
This article was contributed by BusinessPlus Services, a Nigeria-based specialist Digital Marketing Agency that provides a range of business solutions to organizations and companies in the public and private sectors to help them generate adequate traction, interaction and conversions using digital media.