Mobile Marketing Advice: 6 Experts Tell You Everthing You Need to Know

If there’s one specific area of digital marketing that raises nearly every eyebrow when the topic pops up these days, it has to be mobile. From QR codes to Near Field Communications to mobile applications and mobile-optimized websites, (Check out SME on your mobile device — we’ve even gotten on board!), everyone has begun to come around to the fact that consumers are glued to their mobile device. That means your business needs to be there, too.

But, like many, you may be struggling to find time to understand more about mobile marketing. You want to know how it can be used for your business, but haven’t found the right resource, event or website to help you tackle it, right?

I recently attended Social Fresh in Baltimore where an entire day was devoted to mobile marketing. What better way to fill an assignment for Social Media Explorer than to just simply share the expert advice and tips from that day?

The marketing checklist for getting into mobile

Jeanne Hopkins from Hubspot

1.  Lay the foundation. Review the company’s business, or build your own professional digital footprint. Figure out how many people are actually accessing your site via mobile. What role does mobile play in your company and does it make sense?
2. Competitor review. Their strengths, their weaknesses. Look carefully and learn.
3. Set yourself up for success. SMART. Specific measurable actionable realistic and timebound. Give yourself a goal and test in 90 days.
4. Measure your success. What are you trying to achieve? How can you test it? If you can create regular reports on ROI, it will help you a ton.
5. GSD, get *stuff* done. Take action now before it’s behind you. Jump in and try something

4 Reasons why you should have a texting strategy

Justin Mastrangelo of JA.TXT

1. Open rates on emails average 20-30%.
2. Open rates on text messages average 90-95%. Many times withing the first 15 mins. REAL TIME. LAST MINUTE.
3. 99% of phones are SMS capable. QR codes are getting a lot of press but only 6% of mobile users actually use this. People have love affairs w/ text messaging.
4. How? Use mobile as a call to action in traditional ads like TV, Radio and Print.

How to Optimize Email For A Newly Mobile Audience

Justine Jordan of Litmus

Know Your Audience
Consider context: Where do people check email?

• In bed
• At the gym
• In the bathroom
• While drunk
• At their desk
• To kill time

By the way, C.C. Chapman thinks people should STOP checking email in the bathroom. Ha!

The “aware” approach
Being mobile aware involves email designs that consider the mobile experience but aren’t specially constructed for it.

• Single column primary content
• Big images
• Big text
• Big buttons
• Skinny layout

Think about mobile first:
Design for the mobile experience first. Designing for a mobile experience makes your desktop experience better too.

What You Need to Know about The Mobile Web

Tim Hayden from 44 Doors

By 2014, mobile internet usage will likely overtake desktop internet usage. Mobile traffic originates from search. The number one thing we’re doing on the mobile web is searching, not surfing.

9 Tips to Make Content Friendly for the Mobile Web

1. Content must be condensed. You have four to ten times reduction of the content on your desktop site
2. Navigation should be limited to 2-3 actions beyond landing page
3. You must have quick load times (you have less than 30 seconds before the user jumps elsewhere)
4. Mobile and desktop are very different beasts
5. Brevity rules. Connect fast, and call to action quickly
6. Capitalize on natural, current behavior
7. Be pragmatic with new technology
8. Offer multiple channels to pull from offline to online (QR, URL, SMS)
9. Relevancy improves immediate conversion and creates word of mouth

Key Considerations for Building a Mobile App

Simon Salt of IncSlingers
Why? The numbers speak for themselves.

• There are 4 billion cell phones and 1 billion smart phones in the world, right now.
• There are 60 million apple products in the world, right now.
• There are 160,000 android products are there registered every single day.

Recognize that mobile is not just phones — it’s also tablets and lots of other non-tethered devices.

Mobile apps is not a mobile strategy

25% of app are downloaded once and discarded. It doesn’t do what it says it will do. If you’re building an app you have to build it for the user, not for you. What can you do for the user?

You may need to educate your consumer on how to use mobile technologies. Macy’s did a series of TV commercials showing consumers how to scan a QR code.

 Choices to make when you’re thinking about an app: 

1. Should you buy or build?
2. Should the app be native or non-native?
3. What is the purpose of your app?

5 Tips to be Smart about your Mobile Content Strategy

CC Chapman of Content Rules

1.  “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln Spend the time up front figuring out the strategy of your program. What can go wrong? What’s going right?
2. Reimagine, don’t recycle. Rethink and reimagine things for a mobile space–that cool flash site may not work in mobile. Even with a Youtube video, can you watch it on a little screen? Text is still really friendly in mobile, so have a transcript of a cool video interview if it doesn’t work in its original channel.
3. Create Wings and Roots. This is the hardest thing with mobile right now. It’s really hard to share, and go “hey check this out.” It’s missing right now. For online content, you can have share buttons, but it’s not always easy to share in mobile or to incentivize the share.
4. Stoke the campfire. Make people welcome and feel happy that they’ve downloaded your apps.
5. Build momentum. With deals, and specials, once you have someone excited, how do you keep building the momentum?

A special thanks and shout out goes to Tracy Gold of Right Now Marketing who took amazing live notes during the conference that were used for most of this post. If you want to view the full document check it out here.

So what do you think? Is that enough to convince you to consider how mobile will fit into your marketing plans? What tips do you have for marketers who are trying to integrate mobile strategies?

Related articles

• Will mobile marketing target new customers? (marketing.yell.com)
• 6 Ways B2B Marketers Should Optimize for Mobile Browsing (hubspot.com)
• Does the mobile market need to be considered in website build? (marketing.yell.com)
• Lack of Mobile Websites Opens Door for Mobile Marketing Entrepreneurs (prweb.com)