Six Tips for Mobile Marketing That’s Sticky

People love their smartphones. Whether you’re walking down the street or inside a shopping mall, sitting in a coffee shop or at the airport, half the people around you are looking down at their cellphones.

Eighty-three percent of American adults own a cell phone, and 42 percent of them own a Blackberry, iPhone, or a similar smartphone, according to a recent Pew Internet Project report. The study also found that 87 percent of smartphone users access the Internet or email on their device. Two-thirds of smartphone users do so daily. Increasingly, just as how the home broadband connection remains always on, the mobile connection seems to be ever present.

Today’s apps-savvy consumers want business information delivered concisely and available for reading on the fly. Thanks to the explosion of Internet-enabled mobile devices, you and your customers can communicate on the go. Here are six easy ways to deliver on mobile devices marketing that encourages customer interaction.

1. Make Your Emails Mobile-Friendly
Whereas delivering email marketing that can be read on mobile devices used to be optional for a business, now it’s essential. Keep a message’s subject line short and place high up in the message your brand name, the offer, and the call to action.

Related: Your Customers Are Talking. Are You Listening?

Keep your email design simple and light on text, and offer a link to your company’s website or Facebook page so a reader can find out more.

2. Give Mobile Customers What They Need
Forty percent of U.S. smartphone owners compare prices on their mobile device while shopping inside a store, according to HubSpot, an Internet marketing firm in Cambridge, Mass. If you do not optimize your site for mobile users, you may miss sales opportunities. The most sought-after information (a company’s hours, locations, and directions) and popular features should be front and center where customers can easily find them. If mobile consumers cannot find the information they need to guide their purchasing decisions, they may click — but then take their business elsewhere.

3. Invite List Sign-ups via Text Message and Quick-Response Codes
Customers entering into your retail establishment probably are carrying their cellphones on them. Build your contact list by inviting patrons to send a text message (if your email service provider offers this feature) or scan a QR code. Put a sign at your cash register to encourage such activity while the shopping experience is still fresh.

Related: Three Ways to Spark Engaging Social Conversations

A savings coupon or special offer can sweeten the deal for any customers who sign up via text message or QR code. And you end up building your list without having to manually enter email addresses after deciphering handwriting on a sign-up sheet.

4. Build Your Fan Base
Your socially active customers have a Facebook or Twitter app loaded on their smartphones. A sign or poster that encourages them to connect with you in the social media sphere can propel significant growth of your network — and expand your company’s visibility to the contacts of your new followers. Be sure to give customers a good (and fun) reason to like or follow you.

5. Tap Location-Based Services
If you run a brick-and-mortar business or host an event, encourage people to check in on location-based services like Foursquare, Gowalla, or Where. You will gain information about your regular customers and how often they visit you. It also lets your customers share information and tips about your business with others. A unique special offer can encourage these regulars to check in more often.

6. Encourage Reviews on the Run
Encourage customers to share their thoughts about their experience while they are still at our place of business. Post a sign that says, “How’d we do? Let us know!” You can even direct customers to sites like Yelp, Where, Google Places, or TripAdvisor, where you would like them to offer reviews of your business. Make sure you post your company’s Twitter handle, so customers can include it in reviews and follow your business on Twitter for updates. Be sure you stay on top of any customer reviews posted about your company.

More mobile technologies are springing up, enabling businesses and customers to stay connected, regardless of location. Remember: All these gadgets and apps can support your marketing but they should not drive it. You still need to focus your message on how your company provides great products and services. Know who and where your customers are. Then bring the goods to them. Mobile strategies let you package your marketing to better reach them.

Related: Five Ways to Win a Sale Using Your Customer’s Mobile

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What Are The 10 Top Social Networks For Marketing?

Jeff Bullas | Aug 23, 2011 | Comments: 0

So you are the new marketing manager for an organisation with a 100 employees and you are planning your social media marketing strategy for the next 12 months.

If you are a follow the crowd type of marketer and want to play it safe then the decision of which social media networks to deliver and spread the brand message is is not a tough call.

You will start with a list that will have Facebook at the top and you will work down from there.

If you are a bit more creative, like innovation and living dangerously and are an extreme sports fan then you may consider looking at mobile, apps, and locally targeted advertising strategies and tactics that are starting to make their presence felt as part of the marketing toolkit.

So if  you want to know where the rest of the marketing crowd have been playing for the last 12 months then here is some revealing research from emarketer.com that has some intriguing results at the bottom end of the scale

1. Facebook

Facebook was found to be used by 93% of marketers in companies with 100 employees or more and four key elements drive its high participation rate.

1. 750 million plus users
2. Availability of targeted demographic data
3. Self serve ad platform that makes it quick and easy for marketers to launch an advertising campaign
4. Facebook brand “”Pages”

Expect to see competition from Google+ make Facebook even more innovative over the next 12 months

2. Twitter

Twitter is still working out its business model and with only 140 million in ad revenue this year (Facebook’s is projected to exceed 2 billion this year) is still being used 78% of the time by the marketing manager. It is rumored that it will be rolling out a self serve ad function later this year that will make it much more efficient and cost effective to utilize. If the self serve feature is done well then Twitter could accelerate its revenue and value to marketers over the next 12 months.

3. YouTube

YouTube ranks third in the survey at 61% but don’t expect this social media network channel to become a laggard over the next 6 months. One driver for this platform that wasn’t foreseen 12 months ago will be its closer integration into the new Google+ social network which has more than 25 million users. 20% of the marketers in the survey  also indicated they would begin campaigns next year on YouTube.

4. LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s is a less public social network and can provide a great place to market higher value products and services that are more B2B focused ( Business to Business). At 44% nearly half of companies are using its platform to run an ad campaign in this survey

5. Foursquare

The rise of mobiles that are  GPS enabled  is slowly bringing back marketing options for local merchants that want to tempt buyers in the local area with alerts of offers to lure them into a struggling bricks and mortar retail sector. At 10 million registered users as at June 2011 it will need to keep an eye on Facebook’s “Places” feature as its closet competitor. Marketers are using Foursquare 16% of the time for their advertising.

6. MySpace

After having been sold recently for $30 million by the News corporation to a media company (News bought it several years ago for over  $500 million), MySpace is struggling but not quite down and out and I would expect to see it reinvented with its new owners.

It is finding some use for social advertisers at 7%

7. Meebo

Meebo is a social platform connecting users with their friends across the web supporting a wide range of instant messaging platforms including Yahoo messenger, Windows Live Messenger and Facebook Chat. At a usage rate of 4% I wouldn’t be rushing to advertise on this channel

8. Zynga

Zynga is the company behind the loved and hated Farmville and Texas holdem poker. The rise of social gaming has created a company that in a few short years is now reportedly valued at $15-20 billion and has 270 million monthly active users on Facebook. It is currently used by 2% of marketers but this may increase in the future as marketers work how to target their audience

9. Gowalla

Gowalla is a competitor to Foursquare and Facebook “Places” and with an estimated 600,000 active  users it will be interesting to watch how it competes in the location based social networking arena. 1% of marketers in the survey had advertised on Gowalla.

10. Mylife

Mylife was started in 2002 (formerly reunion.com) as a social network service. It did claim to be the 6th largest networking site in 2007 with 28 million users but today according to Quantcast it has an estimated 4.2 million monthly unique users and is still the 7th largest social network in the US. Along with MyLife and Gowalla it attracted 1% of marketers attention.

The bottom five is where the numbers drop into the single digits. So the top five are as most people would have predicted and are generally the place to play if you want leverage, scale and a rapidly developing and vibrant ecosystems with many apps and contributors to their evolution.

Expect to see Google+ on this list next year but at what position will be the billion dollar question as it evolves and rolls out its social integration across all its platforms from mobile to mail and adds the highly anticipated Google+ for brands!

Image by Asthma Helper

Popularity: unranked [?]

Author: Jeff Bullas

*This post originally appeared on Jeffbullas’s Blog and has been reposted with permission.

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Filed Under: Social Media

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