Having a strong digital strategy is essential to your marketing success these days. With the sheer amount of time we spend on our phones, your mobile marketing strategy needs to be of utmost importance. There are many mobile marketing tactics here that you can utilize to improve your strategy. What they all boil down to is understanding your audience, and reaching them where they are at. At the right time, at the right place, in the right way. You can send them a flight notification when they arrive at the airport. If you’re a brick and mortor business, you can give people an incentive for checking in on Facebook, or tagging your location on Instagram. Offer an incentive when people sign up for your emails. Create paid advertising campaigns on social media. No matter what strategy you use, think of how you are going to collect relevant data, metrics and feedback from it. Develop a process to collect and analyze the data you collect. Thus, you will be able to set goals and have a better understanding of what needs to be done to achieve better results. If you have any question about your digital marketing strategy or want us to handle it for you, reach out to us at Prebuilt Sites or The BBS Agency. We’d love to help you out!
We live in a 100% connected reality. The latest data about mobile usage have shown that people are spending more time using mobile devices than ever. The amount of usage may vary depending on age, location, and interests, but we can’t deny that we spend a considerable part of our time interacting with our gadgets.
If you are a marketer you probably know what this means. It’s not a coincidence that many professionals already prefer to run mobile-first campaigns and structure their strategies in this format. More than ever, you have plenty of new opportunities right in front of you – or in front of your audience.
Since people are closer to their smartphones, watches, or tablets, you can take advantage of this proximity to think of potential mobile marketing tactics that will keep your brand closer to the public, while providing a more personalized and timely experience.
Whether you are running a mobile app or not, the opportunities are there and it is a fact that keeping these channels on your radar will help you improve the performance of your campaigns.
Check out below the mobile marketing tactics that I think are the most important ones if you want to take the most out of your digital strategies!
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Getting started, do I need an app?
We all know that developing an app from scratch requires a considerable budget.
Having a mobile app will give you more tools to approach your audience but it is important to understand if it is worth making such an investment or when to do it. Here are a few questions that can help you decide:
- Who is my target audience?
- Is my audience really a mobile app user?
- Is there any other app doing the same job?
- How useful is it going to be?
- How would my app help people have a better experience with my brand?
- What is the purpose of my app? Awareness? Education? Sales?
- What kind / how much return do I expect?
- Do I have the budget to invest in a high-quality app?
After answering questions like these, take some time to think about it and analyze the current scenario, then you will probably have a better idea about the feasibility of developing an app or not. If you decide to go ahead with it, there are many opportunities to take advantage of. If you’re not going further with it, don’t worry, we still have lots of gaps that need to be filled!
“Was that my phone?” – Notifications
If you look at your phone’s notifications center right now, I am almost certain that there will be some banners waiting for you to click on, right? This is one of the main tactics that apps apply to show relevant information and offers to their users.
Before implementing it, it is important to know the two different types of notifications that we receive – or send:
Push notifications
These are probably the ones that make your phone beep many times a day. Push notifications are sent aiming to create an interest in a product or service offer. It can be a discount, promotion, news, or just with the objective of catching your attention and clicks. Some examples are a new movie on your streaming platform or a discount coupon on a delivery app.
Pull notifications
You will probably click on these ones. Pull notifications are those you receive when you have already interacted with an app and it gives you some feedback or update. Some examples are when your food has left the restaurant or when the car you has ordered has arrived.
For notifications strategies, you should be the most creative as possible and use all the features a mobile app allows to send more personalized communication, making it more likely to capture clicks and lead your users to complete the task you aim for.
Messaging as a marketing tool: SMS + Whatsapp
Well, we know that people are much more connected to their phones. When it comes to messaging apps, this channel is also very important since people use it as a quick way to get in touch with their friends and family.
You probably get Messenger notifications many times a day and read them as soon as you have time. This can also be a good way to stay closer to your audience if you have their phone number.
We can consider messaging apps as a source of push notifications. This can be useful for small businesses that still don’t run an app and want to promote products, launches, seasonal offers, or discounts. Creating broadcast lists with a great copy leading to a link or even to convert through the chat, might help you gain good sales opportunities.
The same strategy can be applied to SMS. The difference here is that this type of message may have a cost. A platform to send multiple messages is needed just like the carrier itself, which may charge per message or a monthly/yearly plan.
SMS messages can stand out though, this channel is not commonly used for personal messages anymore. Another benefit is that there is no need to be connected to the internet, so just having a phone signal is enough to deliver the message.
SOLOMO: Right place at the right time
The term SOLOMO is a gathering of the initials: Social + Location + Mobile. It brings the possibilities to be explored by these three variables. Some of them are:
- Adding your business location on Google or Instagram;
- Invite people to check in on their social media. Some businesses use this tactic to provide free wifi connection after check-ins;
- Invite people to tag your business on social when they are at certain locations;
- Add a QR code sticker to ask visitors for a review on Google or Tripadvisor;
- Create beautiful environments for photos with your logo or any other branding icons. This can be a personalized table, plate, glass, or even scenarios for photos, so when people take a picture and post it, their network will see where it was;
The main goal here is to be creative and make your brand stand out while people experience your product or service. SOLOMO tactics can be cheap and simple but there is a high chance of getting good results with it.
Location Based Marketing (LBM)
You probably know or at least have heard about ABM – Account Based Marketing. We have already talked about it in our blog and you can take a deeper look at it here. When it comes to LBM, however, the strategy is to work with personalization according to the location of a person/business.
A good example of it is when you are at the airport and you get a notification regarding your flight or when you receive an email of an event happening in your city.
There are many ways to take advantage of this, especially if your company runs an app. Having a person’s location means you are able to set specific types of communication, like sending an invite to visit a store when they are close to it or map your competitors and send personalized communications when your clients are at one of your stores.
There are even cheaper ways to use this strategy. If you have a contacts base with phone codes, you can segment into regions and send different offers to specific locations. Another way of applying a LBM strategy is running a survey with your audience to know where they are and enrich your contacts base with this information, creating new possibilities of segmentation and personalization.
It is extremely important to have in mind that keeping an eye on your client’s location is very serious and might look a little scary, depending on how you use it. That’s why it is important to know exactly what GDPR states about this and all the regulations regarding capture and use of personal data.
Advertising
There are plenty of ways to plan an advertising campaign in the digital environment.
The first thing you need to know is: which public am I aiming for? When creating a paid campaign, it is very important to know exactly who you are targeting. Create different types of segmentations and try to think as if you were the person who is looking for your product or service.
If you know that there is a good volume of people searching for your products or services on Google, launching a paid campaign with Google Ads might be interesting to start.
However, there are other possibilities, like running social media ads or working with programmatic advertising, so you will be able to automatically buy digital spaces for ads according to your preferences. This is a good way to work with specific segmentations in a wide variety of channels.
Social media
We have mentioned this channel a few times in this article but it is nice to have a specific topic for social media. There are a lot of opportunities here you should be thinking about, like paid initiatives and organic growth.
It doesn’t matter what your product, service, public or strategy is, there are some tips that can help you get better results for your strategies in social media:
- Have a clear and branded profile. Communicate with your audience in a way that people will instantly know that they are seeing a post from you;
- Produce relevant content. Try to understand what kind of content your audience likes to consume and give them what they want;
- Post strategically. Think of the buyer’s journey and try to create different posts and offers according to each stage of the funnel;
- Be consistent and constant. People are using social media everyday, so why not “say hi” to them everyday?
- Exploit the most out of the platforms. You can use polls, quizzes, videos, trends and all the possibilities the platform offers. This is a good way to get engagement and capture helpful feedback.
- Partner with digital influencers. These folks are professional speakers about products and help brands reach higher audiences in specific niches. They usually have a loyal and trustworthy public so it can be a good idea when making a launch or seasonal campaigns.
Once again, it is good to have in mind what the social channels your audience use the most are. This way, you can focus on the stronger ones and think of entry strategies to others.
Be a data-based marketer
All of the tactics mentioned above may bring you insights to help you understand your results. It can be a reply rate on Messenger, number of downloads, clicks, ROI and so on.
Whenever you plan a new strategy, think of how you are going to collect relevant data, metrics and feedback from it. Develop a process to collect and analyze the data you collect. Thus, you will be able to set goals and have a better understanding of what needs to be done to achieve better results.
Running tests is also smart in order to get insights on potential improvements. You can try new channels, copies, designs and so on. Once again, remember to measure your results, so you will really know what is working and what is not.
Another way to collect relevant information is by creating interactive experiences for your audience. You can build calculators, infographics, quizzes and many other types of content while you naturally capture feedback from your audience, helping them engage with your brand and have a more personalized experience.
Want to know more about it? Get to know our Ion Interactive Platform.
Conclusion
You have seen many ways you can go with your mobile marketing strategy, and there are many others to explore.
Whatever mobile marketing tactic you want to apply, if only one or all of them, keep in mind your audience is always closer to their phones and spending more time with them. Try to be as empathic, timely and personalized as possible.
Think of the possibilities relevant data might bring to you, but remember this can also be a sensitive point. So always have the GDPR guidelines in mind.
Originally published on Rock Content.
