As a small business owner, chances are your mobile phone might as well be glued to your hand since you use it so often. The same can be said for most of your customers. That’s why mobile marketing is so important. As a growing digital marketing tactic that leverages smartphone and tablet use, you can develop mobile-friendly marketing campaigns to reach your audience and expand your customer base.
Here, we look at why you need mobile marketing for your small business, with tips to help you take advantage of this effective small business marketing technique.
Understand Your Mobile Marketing Options
You might be surprised to see how many mobile marketing options are available. The type of mobile marketing you choose depends on your goals and objectives. Some of the most popular and effective options that can impact consumer behavior include:
- In-App Marketing: People love their apps, so this is a perfect opportunity to influence your audience. Whether you use your own app or look at other apps available, in-app marketing provides a perfect opportunity to advertise to the people interested in what you offer. If you choose your own app, it’s easy to promote products and services using banners, overlays, and inbox messages. However, you can also display ads on apps relevant to your brand. You can even include full-page ads or videos.
- Mobile Push Marketing: Push marketing “pushes” your products and services to mobile devices to share messages and relevant information with users. The term push comes from keeping your brand in your customer’s field of vision constantly for the sole purpose of selling products, as opposed to “pull” marketing, which is more focused on brand awareness. Mobile push notifications are remarkably effective, sending simple yet powerfully persuasive messages at the most critical stage of the customer journey. Notifications sent as close to a purchase as possible help push prospects into conversion. Some examples would be reminding customers they still have items in their cart, letting customers know something they viewed on your website is on sale, or suggesting a person purchase a product that pairs well with their most recent purchase.
- SMS Marketing: This is the classic mobile marketing technique, running campaigns or marketing via text, such as a promotion, a link to a shopping cart, a reminder about a subscription, or sharing an exclusive offer. It’s affordable and bound to succeed as it’s such a familiar form of communication people will check the message out of habit.
- Social Media: Since most people are using their phones to constantly scroll their favorite social channels, this is a no-brainer for mobile marketing. This is a great way to foster relationships, nurture leads and make a more personal connection.
- Location-Based Marketing: These ads are essential for small businesses that depend on local customers. You can reach people in your vicinity using customized campaigns that resonate with them because your business is in their neck of the woods. It’s the perfect tactic to encourage impulse purchases.
- QR Code Mobile Marketing: This might seem a little outdated, but QR codes make it easy for mobile users to scan your codes and use them for various actions, including accessing a link on your website, downloading an app, posting a review, or signing up for your email or newsletter. There’s really no end to ways to use QR codes to engage customers and your audience. It can be paired with a variety of marketing options from social media to websites and digital ads to traditional print and transit ads.
Make Everything Mobile-Friendly
You need a responsive website design that adapts to the type of device your customers use. With a mobile-friendly website, you optimize your pages for easier viewing on mobile devices, such as a handy “hamburger” navigation and scrollable pages. This provides a more enjoyable user experience to avoid frustration and bounces. Pages should also be quick-loading with easy-to-click larger buttons for calls to action. As a bonus, mobile-friendly websites are preferred by search engines, as are easy navigation and quick-loading pages that can improve your SEO.
To App or Not to App
Customized business apps add an edge to your business so you can remain competitive. However, the question is whether it makes sense to invest in app development for your brand. Some considerations when deciding to app or not to app include:
- How scalable you need to be: An app can be designed to manage a growing product line or services so you can be ready to scale up as you expand your offering. If you are a niche small business with something like artisanal products, an app is probably not a major concern.
- Security: Custom apps can make your customer interactions more secure, which might be more important to you if you store and share substantial amounts of customer data.
- Product attributes: If you sell products with a lot of customized attributes, your customers might appreciate a custom app that makes it easier to make selections and place orders free of errors and delays.
- Real-time customer interactions: You can do this with a lot of other mobile marketing like SMS and social media. However, with an app, you can do it in a more personalized way that creates customer engagement and relationship-building opportunities.
- Customized data collection: Using your own app makes it easy to add data collection features like star ratings for your brand, surveys, forms to collect data, etc.
- Customer service: You can create an app dedicated to customer service so customers can simply download the app and use it when they need it. This would work along the lines of apps like Shop that allow customers to see their orders, track packages, maintain receipts, etc., for multiple retailers.
Jumping on the Mobile Marketing Bandwagon
Mobile isn’t new, but they are constantly developing so they affect more people in a growing number of ways. By jumping on the mobile marketing bandwagon, so to speak, you can transform your business to meet the changing needs of what’s happening out there. To say it would revolutionize your business would be a little overdramatic. However, to suggest it would elevate your business, customer engagement, and service is pretty accurate.
Because smartphones and mobile devices are an integral part of most people’s everyday lives, you can reach people faster and in a familiar way that makes connections more meaningful. You can keep up with the evolving digital landscape so that as new digital marketing opportunities arise, you’re there at the forefront, breaking new ground. You’re also leveraging the convenience of smartphone communication, making life easier for your customers so there’s no delay or disruption to their purchase decisions. You become the here and now for customers, providing seamless, friction-free experiences. You also influence customer decisions in many powerful ways, including:
- Increasing brand awareness: Mobile marketing allows you to leverage targeted marketing where your customers tend to hang out, such as search engines, apps, and social channels. You become a familiar face amongst all the noise, so your brand becomes recognizable and trustworthy.
- Facilitating research: People depend on their smartphones for discovery, whether it’s asking Siri to answer a question like confirming that yes, that was Amy Adams, not Isla Fisher in Talladega Nights, to win a bet or to research products and services. Smartphones have relevance when it comes to research providing quick access to information and influencing decisions.
- Getting personal: Customization and personalization using mobile marketing builds trust and makes life easier for consumers. When the info you share is always relevant and linked to opportunities to make a purchase or order a service, well you not only increase sales but also help foster brand loyalty.
- Leveraging location: Location-based targeting using mobile phones allows you to provide contextually relevant offers on a granular level when people are near your store. You can influence impulse purchases and drive traffic to your location on a whim.
- Convenience: Speaking to people on the device that is the most valuable tool in their lives makes it easy for them to get what they need with the scroll of a thumb and tap of a finger.
- Keeping top of mind: Things shouldn’t end because the purchase is made. Mobile marketing allows you to remain top of mind with post-purchase engagement that ensures you maintain your relevancy to customers. This is also critical to soliciting feedback, ratings, and reviews.
There’s just no getting around the role smartphones play in your customer’s lives. So, it means there’s no getting around mobile marketing. You can help influence their daily decisions, leveraging a highly effective marketing strategy to foster loyalty, improve customer experience/satisfaction and ultimately drive sales.
Mobile marketing provides the opportunity to engage customers in a familiar, safe environment, making dealing with your brand convenient and pleasurable. Including mobile marketing in your digital marketing strategy is critical as it is probably the most influential way to help customers make purchase decisions in your favor. You can set your brand apart using unique technology with a customized app or stick to tactics like SMS and social media.
Optimize for mobile success! Reach out to learn how mobile marketing can propel your small business.
