Mobile has undoubtedly become the mainstay of online selling and branding today.
According to WeAreSocial’s ‘Digital in 2018’ report, the global mobile phone penetration stands at 68%, with 5.135 billion unique mobile users. Of these users, 3.722 billion are active mobile internet users, and 2.958 billion people use social media from their phone. As if that wasn’t enough to convince you, here’s the real deal: 52% of internet traffic comes from mobile phones – more than laptops, desktop and tablets combined. These figures clearly indicate that this channel is a goldmine of opportunities for digital marketers and businesses alike. And it can be rightly declared that mobile marketing is no longer a choice for those who want to stay relevant to the customers and continue to engage them. If you haven’t still though hard about taking up a mobile marketing approach, it isn’t too late to start now. What you really need to do is to chalk out the right set of strategies that are capable of yielding quick and active results. Let’s list all that is essential and trending on this front.
Go responsive with design
The first place to start is your website. If your website is not device responsive, you need to invest in making sure that it is mobile and tablet friendly. This means that when a customer logs into your website through a device other than their computer, the website should be able to adjust its layout, look and feel, and functionality for the smaller screen so that the customer can enjoy a seamless experience. Trust me – if you don’t do this, the minute your customer logs into your website and struggles to navigate, they will give up and they probably won’t come back.
Speed matters the most
Just going responsive is not enough and your site needs to load with a superfast speed too. Mobile users are an impatient lot and every extra second that your site takes to load puts you at a risk for losing them. A slow loading website has higher bounce rates and lower retention rates. This is the reason that you should focus on optimizing its loading speed. Irritating elements such as pop-ups should be eliminated as they tend to slow the speed and break the UX. So get rid of these, pronto.
Create mobile-friendly content
Once you’ve done this, the next step is to start creating mobile-friendly content for your customers. This can happen in many different ways, including optimising headlines (by making them short, crisp and more concise) for smaller screens; ensuring that your content is search-engine optimized for mobile (mobile searches tend to be more specific than computer searches, so you need to bear this in mind as you work on SEO); and staying clear of heavy files such as pictures and video files, which will increase the loading time of your website.
Make investment in mobile apps
While beefing up your website is one part of the picture, you can definitely get smarter with your mobile marketing plan by investing in an app. It is a one-time investment that brings significant benefits throughout your business lifespan. A major portion of the mobile users prefers mobile apps to responsive sites because of the superior experience and ease of use. So this is one strategy that you should embrace to ace the game.
Enhance the user experience
You can also empower your mobile marketing strategy by enhancing the customer experience. Personalization is the key as smartphone users are definitely smarter and expect you to know and deliver what they want. Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, location tracking, and user analytics can be leveraged to understand their behaviour and preferences and offer them personalized notifications. Apps that provide chatbot support score higher in terms of UX. Similarly, you can step up mobile experiences by investing in high-tech features powered by Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.
These are some of the simplest and most impactful ways to get started. Once you’ve established your mobile presence, you can start to bring in more innovative ways of outreach to keep customers engaged. But whatever you do, mobile must be a part of your marketing strategy going forward – because, without it, it’s going to be a struggle to stay in the game.
The original blog was published on www.weareaspire.com on (04 Oct 2018)
