Mobile Marketing – Why should you care & how ?

In the last few years, consumer behavior and expectations have changed drastically forcing marketers to unlearn and learn. Especially smart phones with internet access have caused fundamental change in the manner in which people interact, communicate, work, get things done. All the information about the world is in the pocket of the consumer. Mobile phones have influenced the buying decision of consumers.

Almost all marketers agree that mobile is the future, but very few do have mobile marketing plan.

In this article we shall discuss in detail the tenants of mobile marketing and best practices with some live examples.

How to Create a great Mobile experience?

One key part of mobile marketing is creating a great mobile experience. Right from the attracting user with a mobile ad, to converting the user into a customer and giving him a great mobile experience is mobile marketing.

The following key aspects are advisable:

Creating a responsive website instead of adaptive website

These days one can find mobile devices with a screen size that varies from 3 inches to 10 inches. Instead of creating mobile site specifically for mobile screens, one should create responsive site where one site adapts itself as per the screen resolution of device. This allows marketer to focus on one website instead of multiple version.

Example: Online mobile site rechargeitnow.com has mobile site hosted at m.rechargeitnow.com and desktop version rechargeitnow.com. Setup like these should be avoided and focus should be on making responsive site which is designed for multiple designs like the freecharge one.

Keep the Call to Actions appear on front and center

Due to paucity of screen space, the key actions items of the mobile site should be given preference as it easy for user to act upon. Other options can be handled through menus or scrolled down sections of the pages.

As shown in below example, the key focus is on key action item i.e “Get a Quote”

Create & encourage share worthy experience

Consumers prefer rich, engaging online experiences, especially if these experiences can be shared with others. Consumers react positively by sharing their experience online and therefore one needs to make mobile site easy to share

Example: Reliance General Insurance has whatsapp sharing tool which is visible in the App.

Mobile Apps

Mobile apps are great way to provide rich experience to customers. Websites are aimed at enquiry generation & information dissemination, whereas with mobile apps it’s all about engagement, retention, and lifetime value. Smartphones provide useful data such as location , mobile device information & more which can be used to provide a good experience for customers, thus encourage consumers to share and spread WOM about the company. Mobile apps provide multiple advantages for a marketer such as:

• Provide hassle free online experience for the consumer to do business, whether be searching of product, exploring a new service or buying a product online.
• Apps also provide excellent branding opportunity, which feature such as push notifications where one can be in touch with consumer and get constant feedback from consumer instantly, launch new products, offers, run promotions etc.
• If mobile app is created, user expect to similar experience from the mobile site and content on mobile app and mobile site should be consistent so as to provide seem-less experience.

Mobile App Indexing

App Indexing enhances your app discovery for users. As App markets gets more crowded and consumers preferring mobile apps, App indexing is imperative. App indexing helps your app to be visible in Google search. After your app is indexed, mobile users who search for content related to your app can see an install button to your mobile app in Search results. This is one of the effective ways to promote one’s own app.

Mobile Email

Email access from Smartphones has increased tremendously and Email turns out be one of the most effective way to reach new customer. As per Google, more than 65% of emails are opened in Mobile screen. So any E-mailer should be mobile friendly E-mailer.

The mobile-friendly e-mailer ought to have text which is readable without zoomin, it should have call to action, followed by local business address and contact number(if any) . These details help customer to contact you directly by clicking on the number.

Below is classic example which shows optimized way to build your marketing emails to your customers. The Redbus email has text which is readable text while in the ICICI bank emailer, one has to Zoom in to read content. And there is no call to Action button in ICICI bank emailer

Creating a mobile friendly emailer is not difficult task. One can begin by using templates that many email marketing companies offer such as Mailchimp , Sendgrid etc. Use the templates and create effective mobile Emailer.

In the next article, we shall discuss in detail about SMS Marketing , Mobile ad campaigns and its metrics and best practices in mobile marketing.