- Twenty-five percent of all e-commerce sales come from mobile devices.
- In 2019, consumers spent an average of three hours and 10 minutes on their smartphones every day.
- Mobile marketing is a strategy where business owners and marketers attempt to engage with consumers using their mobile devices.
- When implemented correctly, a mobile marketing strategy can result in more sales, engagement and traffic.
Are you the owner of a new business, but struggling to generate sales and boost engagement from mobile users? There's no question that mobile devices play a significant role in the e-commerce landscape, with 25% of all online sales stemming from mobile devices. However, mastering mobile marketing takes some time, plus plenty of trial and error.
Let's start by defining mobile marketing. Mobile marketing is a strategy business owners and marketers use to engage with consumers who are using their mobile devices. Technically, all forms of marketing have a mobile counterpart. When you consider that the average person spends three hours and 10 minutes on their phone every day, it's no surprise that business leaders want to reach these individuals.
Here are four broad tips to improve your mobile marketing strategy, with actionable advice for each suggestion.
1. Check and improve your onsite UX.
User experience, or UX, is a crucial factor for all business owners. UX encompasses everything from your navigation menu at the top of the page to your checkout form. A good user experience means consumers will have an easier time browsing your site, enjoy the added accessibility options, and have a reason to continue engaging with your brand.
There are plenty of ways to improve UX on your website. First, we suggest that you find where you can boost your site speed. According to Google, most mobile webpages take 22 seconds to load. Business owners are quickly discovering that there's a significantly higher chance a consumer will bounce from a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load.
It's crucial to add contact forms on your website and that they are easy to find. There's a good chance that people visiting your webpage for the first time will have questions. If they are using a mobile device, they may have trouble locating your contact page and submitting a ticket. We suggest that when you're creating a mobile variant for your website, you create a simple contact form on your sidebar so that consumers can access this feature from any page.
2. Optimize images and videos in emails.
Email marketing is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to grow your lead list and improve customer engagement. However, did you know that a majority of customers check their email from their mobile devices? In other words, your messages have to work on smartphones and tablets if you want to see more engagement on your website.
The first thing you should do is make sure all of your videos and images are formatted for mobile devices. Consumers don't like it when they get emails from businesses if they are broken and incomplete. Don't forget to take advantage of alt text to help consumers who still end up with a broken image.
For instance, imagine your marketing team made a giant promotional banner for your next email. You send out your next newsletter with the promotion at the top of the screen, except it doesn't render for your mobile crowd. Now they have no idea that this promotion is going on, and your sales and engagement suffer.
If you had used alt tags on your images, consumers could see a message that says, "Save 40% now. Use code Save40." Small accessibility changes can have a huge impact on the success of your mobile marketing campaign.
3. Step up your social media strategy.
Over 3 billion people use social media today. No one is surprised to learn that marketers use social media platforms as a way to generate leads, build rapport and close sales. But are there elements of your social media marketing strategy that appeal to your mobile fan base?
One of the best things you can do to boost your mobile strategy is to add video content to your upload schedule. Research shows that 91% of people with smartphones use their devices to access social media. Due to this popularity, creating shareable content is your ticket to growing a mobile audience.
We suggest taking your popular blog posts and turning them into an engaging video. Use this as an opportunity to add new information, build your brand personality and engage with your audience. Repurposing your content is a great way to reach a diverse audience on social media.
Additionally, you'll want to make sure all of your events are simplified or, better yet, one-click online. For instance, if you're holding a contest, make sure it's as easy as possible for your mobile users to tag their friends, share your posts and follow your brand.
4. Add voice search keywords to your content.
We heard for years that good SEO is the key to a successful business. While that statement is more or less correct, much has changed. For instance, voice search is a new subset of SEO that relies on voice-activated devices or programs – think Amazon's Alexa or Google's Home Assistant.
This technology is also built into new Apple and Android smartphones and growing rapidly, with 72% of people who own voice-activated devices saying it is now part of their daily routine. Because people have become dependent on this technology, business owners are finding ways to improve and fine-tune the existing voice search framework.
Voice SEO differs from traditional SEO in that it focuses on what consumers will say instead of what they will type. When most of us have a question, we go to Google and type in the closest words that relate to our query. If you were looking for a new dog collar, you might type in "highly rated dog collar." This key phrase will get you the results you are after, but saying it out loud sounds clumsy. Instead, you might ask your Amazon Echo, "Which dog collars have the highest ratings?"
Marketers are using this slight variation in language to optimize for keywords that are personalized for their business. Now, when someone asks Siri a question relevant to your niche, there is a good chance they will see a link to your website.
Mobile marketing is here to stay. Consumers love their smartphones, and we can't say we blame them. As our technology evolves, we expect to find new ways to interact with our target audience through email, social media and our websites.
The key to a successful mobile strategy, especially if you are a new business owner, is willingness to experiment with your ideas and analyze the results. Split testing is important in all areas of marketing, but it is vital to evolving your campaign for mobile users.
Behaviors and interests change over time. When you can experiment with different marketing and UX styles, trends begin to emerge. You can use these trends to make changes to your products or website for maximum conversions and engagement.