If you are not already convinced that mobile marketing is an essential addition to your marketing plan, whether you are a small, B2B-focused business or a Fortune 100 consumer-focused company, here are some statistics that will make you reconsider:
- There are 5.3 billion mobile subscribers – that’s 77% of the world’s population (mobithinking.com)
- Mobile ad spend worldwide is predicted to be $3.3 billion in 2011 sky rocketing to $20.6 billion in 2015, driven by search ads and local ads.
- Text messages have a 96% open rate versus email which has an average 5-8% open rate.
- Average response time to a text message is 1-5 minutes: average response time to an email is 24 hours.
- A comprehensive, well thought out mobile marketing initiative layered on top of your existing marketing efforts typically increases sales and customer retention by 30-60% (Andrea Busse, CEO & President of IntelaText).
Still not Convinced?
A successful business is not necessarily about having the best product or service, it’s about offering customers the best value. If you can get a great deal in front of the consumers at the very moment they are poised to make a purchase – you have a vastly greater chance of converting casual browsers into paying customers.
As more pre-sale research is being conducted on mobile devices – thanks to over half of mobile devices in circulation being web-enabled – you do not want to gain that immensely important edge over your competitiors by:
- Ensuring that your web pages are mobile optimized across all mobile web browsers
- Going a step or 3 further by building out an entire mobile campaign that will draw potential customers to you and leave your competitors frantic to gain ground
Getting ahead of the competition
In terms of mobile this does not simply mean having a mobile optimzed web page – rather, it means you have taken the necessary time, effort and resources to fully engage your target audience with a captivating compaign that works seamlessly in conjunction with your existing mareting efforts.
Why Would a Consumer WANT to Engage with you via Text or Mobile Web?
Because mobile marketing is still in its nascent stages, you want to act now before every man and his dog begins to start sending spammy SMS’s that have caused the same low open rates and spam filter issues that genuine email marketers have an increasing battle against.
So being able to unleash your mobile marketing efforts ahead of the competition is certainly a huge advantage. Additionally, the more compelling your mobile experience is, the more your audience will want to engage with your brand versus a competitors’, and so will be infinitely more likely to interact with you first – be this requesting a quote, making a purchase, or taking advantage of a mobile coupon you have sent them. Remeber, if done right, your mobile marketing campaign will not be seen as a nuisance in the eyes of your target audience. Rather you are offerring them a more efficient and time saving way to garner information from you and allow you to begin to sew seeds even if you aren’t successful in immediately selling an item, which is only likely if you are in the ringtone, mobile application or music/media on demand business.
But these are certainly not the only businesses that should be utilizing mobile marketing. Think about how much time people now spend on their phones, tha vast majority of which are either smartphones or at minimum web-enabled. Much of the time they are using phones to fill up ‘dead time’ in their day by getting something productive done on their phone; be it pay a bill via mobile banking, check their social media accounts, play games, or research a purchase via a review site, and as a next step, look up location or ecommerce destinations to go ahead and make that purchase.
By being the first one or two of your competitors to embrace a compelling, well thought out mobile strategy, you will have already won 75% of the battle of getting the customer to find your brick and mortar or virtual store front. The remaining 25% is showing that customer deals they cannot refuse, providing first-class customer service, and already given the customer a reason to return to you, for example by taking their mobile number at the point of purchase and sending them a coupon for a next purchase at a later date.
5 Steps to Mobile Success
1. Define your Goals with Measurable Benchmarks
Is it new customers you are after? Getting existing customers to buy more? Enhancing brand awareness and engagement, or improving customer service? Or maybe you are looking to increase high-quality inbound leads to your sales team?
All of these are valid goals that can be achieved with a mobile marketing strategy. However, you should have a separate goal for each mobile marketing campaign you embark on, and of course be very clear about what resulting metrics you are looking to achieve. This will help you ensure you have met or exceeded goals, allow you to compare the success of a mobile campaign versus others you have run, for example email, and also allow you to tweak and optimize the campaign in future by trying different creative and offers.
2. Ensure that your SMS List is 100% Opt In
Before you begin a text massage blast, make sure your list is 100% opt-in. It doesn’t matter how great you think the deal you are offering is – if someone has not knowingly registered to receive offers via text from you, they will likely be seen as a nuisance and could actually discourage customers from purchasing from you.
To avoid this, spend 30 – 90 days growing your opt-in list through a number of unobtrusive methods:
- Get Customer’s Permission
To receive offers via text either at the physical point of sale or as they check out from their virtual shopping basket by asking for their mobile number, and ensure them this will not be shared with a third-party
- Add call to action buttons
on your website and social media pages next to your existing email opt-in buttons (You could even try replacing your “Subscribe to email offers” with a “Subscribe to Text offers” for 30 days to increase conversion
- Allow customers to easily opt in
to your list by texting a short code to you or by swiping a QR code – a much easier and quicker way for them to engage with you than going to your website and filling in a long registration form, or going to your Facebook or Twitter page to become a fan or follow you.
- Send a ‘Welcome’ text
As soon as the user opt-ins so that they remember they have done so and begin to feel a personal connection to your company. Ideally the welcome text will include a branded app they can install (it’s possible to create a mobile platform agnostic one which takes very little or no memory on their phone). Or, include a link to a mobile optimized landing page which has a clear marketing message and call to action – for example, submit your email address or receive a free game or ringtone.
- Make Unsubscribing Easy
This should be as simple as hiting reply to your message and texting back the short code “STOP. This will help keep your list free of subscribers who are not responsive to text offers, and lessen any knock on impact of them responding to other forms of offers from you. It will also reduce costly calls to your call center from customers asking to unsubscribe.
3. Layer your mobile marketing campaign over existing efforts
Mobile marketing should not be approached as a standalone component of your marketing plan, rather it should be fully integrated with your other elements, both on and offline, be they social media, search, display, billboard, magazine, or in-store advertising.
This means that you will want to promote your mobile campaign across all of your other existing campaigns, for example: let your Facebook, Twitter and blog followers know that they will be eligible to receive special offers or get premium customer service via text if they submit their mobile number to you. Train your cashiers to educate customers about the benefits of recieving offers by text and of course capturing their number at this time.
4. Develop a compelling app or mobile optimized landing page
Although mobile marketing is still one of the newest tools in a marketers toolkit, more and more organizations are catching on to its effectiveness and so as with any other new marketing tactic, it will be necessary to to wow and engage your audience from the very first text you send them so as not to get lost in the ever-increasing text noise. Furthermore, people will have a low threshold for receiving texts, because mobile devices are such personal items that are literally kept close to the owner’s chest at nearly all times of the day and night, not to mention that some subscribers still have to pay to receive texts on cetain wireless tariffs in the US for example.
Therefore you want to be sure your 140 character text makes a big impact. This could be in the form of:
- An offer they cannot refuse, e.g. 30% off anything coupon until the end of the month
- A cool, useful or fun branded app that does not take up too much memory on their phone, e.g. an addictive game that will keep them coming back to your app
- A mobile optimized web page where they can submit their details to enter a competition, make a purchase, or simply have a sales representative contact them if it is a larger ticket item
5. Monitor your metrics and optimize
Like any successful marketing campaign you should be aware of the key metrics and targets you are trying to achieve, and of course to determine whether the campaign was profitable, and what can be optimized in order to make it more so.
Companies like IntelaText offer superior analytics so you can not only determine how much ROI you got from a mobile campaign, but which of your subscribers actually took participated and engaged with the campaign. This information is invaluable in terms of knowing who to target next time, or who to try something different with.
How Can Angled End Help Me Get Started?
We can:
- Create a mobile-only website style sheet that will “tweak” the appearance of your existing site to function better with mobile browsers (example: www.ccchallenge.com )
- Work with foundational plugins to create a mobile version of a CMS-based website (WordPress, Drupal, etc.)
- Rebuild your web presence from the ground up to be both mobile- and desktop-friendly
- Create a native mobile app that will encourage users to engage with your brand
- Project-manage and monitor the metrics involved in a mobile marketing campaign for you