With the emergence of tablet computers and smart phones, mobile marketing including such things as SMS messaging, QR codes, and Bluetooth proximity-based messaging, have boomed in popularity and importance. No marketing mix is complete without considering how mobile marketing fits into the picture. Keep the following tips in mind as you explore mobile marketing for your business. They will steer you to best practices and help you stay away from common mistakes.
Make your website and messaging mobile friendly. If your website is too big and text heavy to be easily read on a mobile device, then you are losing out on a lot of potential new customers. You don’t need to use a generic mobile template that strips away all of your site’s amazing personality, but you do need to consider how you scale. Developing your site in HTML5 is one solution. HTML5 excels at scaling websites to the size of the screen at hand. You can also develop a micro-version of your larger site. This isn’t, again, one of those generic mobile templates. This is a condensed version of your actual site that makes the most of screen real estate available.
As well, your messaging needs to fit the medium at hand. Keep your messaging short and yet still personable. Mobile marketing, especially SMS messaging, happens on devices that allow people to be anywhere, doing anything, so your messaging may have a lot of competition for focus. Keep it, then, as short and fun as you can. Make it feel like a message from a friend.
Don’t send your SMS messages on holidays, weekends, or odd hours. You may feel your message is the most important thing going, but your target audience is still busy leading their daily lives. If you interrupt them during days usually set aside for family and friends, you may actually hurt the relationship you are trying to foster. If you send a message that wakes them up during sleep, you could build a lot of bad will. Be considerate with your timing, and you’ll find many people amenable to your marketing.
Develop a discount strategy around all of your mobile marketing. No matter the type of mobile marketing you are using, it all fosters a sense of immediacy. Messages pop up immediately on a device or a Bluetooth sensor senses your presence and beams a quick message. Because of this mobile marketing is tailor made for direct response marketing. Offer your mobile audience special deals, offers, and discounts that are exclusive to them. Create a special that is only received and available to people when they are physically in the store. This can really boost the engagement with your brand, and it makes your audience more amenable to receiving your mobile messages. If they feel they are getting value from the slight annoyance created by the immediacy, then they will continue to allow it and even appreciate it in the future.
Take the next steps with the tips you found here, but don’t stop learning about mobile marketing. The landscape is constantly changing, so you need to be on top of it to make the most of it. You’ll find, in time, that your business will come out ahead for your efforts.