How powerful is mobile marketing in the modern marketplace? Consider this query: When was the last time you spent a full waking hour without checking or otherwise using your smartphone at least once? Whether it was for an internet info query, a shopping search, a quick check of the weather forecast, or a broad range of other possible mobile maneuvers, chances are you’ve stared at your small screen relatively recently — and if you’re like most of us, you did so multiple times.
Of course, among today’s American consumers — and for the most part, modern consumers worldwide — mobile devices have become nearly ubiquitous. Consider these powerful statistics related to modern consumers’ use of mobile devices:
- More than 90% of U.S. consumers now own smartphones.
- The average time U.S. consumers spend on a mobile phone each day, not including time spent on phone calls, topped 4.5 hours in 2022 — and it’s expected to increase moving forward.
- Smartphones accounted for over 70% of U.S. retail website visits in the first quarter of 2023, along with more than 60% of e-commerce orders.
8 ways to foster mobile-marketing success
For marketers in the digital age, the persistent presence and use of mobile devices presents huge opportunities. After all, these seemingly omnipresent devices offer an avenue to directly connect with potential customers nearly anytime and anywhere via a device that’s almost always in their hand, by their side or at least within easy reach.
Ready to harness the full potential of mobile marketing to boost business for your brand? Make sure these eight important tactics are a part of your mobile marketing strategy:
1. Consider mobile-friendliness a must
With so much web traffic coming via mobile devices these days, ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly simply isn’t optional anymore. If your brand’s site doesn’t already feature one, consider implementing a responsive design that helps your site look good and deliver a great user experience across a range of devices and screen sizes. This type of design recognizes what type of device a visitor to your website is using, then optimizes page elements such as images, layout style, text and button sizes, etc. to deliver strong performance and appeal in every case.
Alternatively, your brand could employ mobile web design to create secondary webpages that are separate from your primary website and built specifically for mobile devices. To deliver the best possible mobile user experience, these pages should be “designed for thumbs” — resulting in page layouts than can be easily navigated when users are holding their mobile devices one-handed, cradled or two-handed … and using their thumb (or thumbs) to click, swipe and otherwise get around. A few important design principles to consider for your brand’s mobile-first webpages include:
- Make any on-page touch targets such as buttons and CTAs large in size so they’re easy to click and select with the thumb(s).
- Avoid any page elements that require pinching/zooming in to be seen or read.
- Steer clear of hovers (on-page elements that require users to hover their cursor over them to create a visual change), as these are not a good fit for navigation with the thumb(s).
- Keep content and images as streamlined as possible — less is more with mobile-first design.
- Mobile users are often looking to perform actions that fall into the “mobile-priority” category — things like getting directions to a store location, calling a business or making quick purchases. Ensure that the means to perform all of these actions are prominent on your brand’s mobile pages, and that accomplishing them with the thumb(s) is easy via elements like click-to-call phone numbers, one-touch links to driving directions and friction-free paths to purchase.
2. Step up your speeds
How quickly do your website’s pages load on mobile devices? This is a critical part of the user experience, especially for consumers on smartphones, which may not always have access to lightning-fast Wi-Fi speeds when the user is out and about. Today’s mobile-device users expect a web page to load in under 3 seconds — and pages that take longer to load can lead to user frustration and even abandonment. To ensure your mobile-friendly pages are loading quickly enough, consider using a tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to measure your page-load speeds and to get tips on how to improve them.
3. Ramp up your rich content
When it comes to catching the attention of increasingly on-the-go consumers with shortening attention spans, expecting website visitors (and especially those on mobile devices) to read through lengthy blocks of gray copy is rarely a recipe for success. Instead, it’s best to incorporate engaging elements on your web pages that catch consumers’ eyes and encourage user interaction. And by incorporating rich content (aka “enhanced content” or “A+ content”) such as images, video, audio and animated GIFs on your mobile-friendly web pages, your brand can deliver a sensory-snagging hook that pulls people in and helps keep their attention.
4. Lead in the local search
According to statistics from Google, more than three-quarters of local searches on mobile devices result in an in-person visit within a day — and more than a quarter of these searches result in a sale. There are several ways your brand can improve its rankings in local search results, and one of the easiest and most effective is to optimize your Google My Business listing.
5. Convey info with a QR code
Marketing materials and assets such as business cards, flyers, direct mail pieces, packaging and signage can often present challenges with their space limitations. But by incorporating QR codes on these marketing assets and more, brands can quickly and easily direct mobile device users to additional information or resources. To take a deeper dive into how your brand can harness QR codes to boost its mobile marketing efforts, check out this Brandon blog article on the topic.
6. Eliminate checkout challenges
Your brand spends a lot of time and money getting consumers to visit its website. And when they put items in their online shopping cart, your efforts have succeeded in getting them right up to the finish line for conversion. That makes checkout issues, which can be especially problematic on mobile devices, an all-the-more painful way to keep them from crossing it. To avoid excessive cart abandonment, take the necessary steps to ensure that your mobile checkout process is fast, easy and intuitive.
7. Tap into text marketing
SMS marketing offers brands an instant, direct and effective way to communicate with consumers (after they opt in, of course), and it’s an especially effective tactic for communicating special offers and sending reminders to participating customers. In addition, it offers powerful advantages for marketers, including interactivity, trackability, immediate delivery and the potential for personalization. For tips on finding success with your brand’s SMS marketing campaigns, take a look at this Brandon blog article.
8. Invest in an app
Every big brand seems to have a mobile app these days. And from a marketing perspective, there’s good reason for this. A mobile app is typically focused specifically on your brand, its offerings and its communications, and it’s purpose-built for use on smartphones, tablets and other handheld devices. And by developing and deploying a high-quality mobile app, your brand can boost consumer engagement, foster stronger consumer connections, increase customer loyalty, elevate the user experience and more.
Brandon: Your go-to partner for mobile marketing and more
Looking for expert help that can put your brand’s mobile marketing strategy in motion? At Brandon, our team of certified brand strategists and data-driven marketing professionals has been leveraging mobile marketing to move the needle for clients for years — and we’re ready to get your brand’s mobile campaigns rolling, too.
In addition, Brandon’s fully integrated marketing firm can cover the entire spectrum of your brand’s marketing needs, from SEO, social media and email marketing to e-commerce, digital marketing, media, creative, analytics, public relations, brand strategy, web design and more. To get started with help ranging from a simple website analysis to a comprehensive strategy tailored to boost the performance of all your marketing campaigns, contact us today.