The consumption of mobile telephony continues to grow at an exorbitant rate throughout the planet. Of the more than 7,000 million people who inhabit it, around 5,000 million have a mobile phone, as Google has revealed this week. Today, nobody is surprised by terms such as SMS, Bluetooth or WhatsApp. Thus, an attractive business opportunity knocks on our door in 2012, the question is: Are we prepared to receive it as it deserves? There are some actions that we can apply to take the first steps in our mobile marketing strategy, a means that today is emerging as one of the sales channels with greater growth and future.
The penetration of Smartphones already exceeds 50% of the global number of mobile phone users and more than half of them use these devices to make purchases online. These data reveal that the time has come to adapt our offer to these small devices to take advantage of this powerful business tool, as the Meliá Hotels chain has already done, which has managed to make 70% of reservations made through mobile, increasing 300% sales thanks to a mobile marketing strategy. And is that for two years mobile transactions significantly exceed those made through the PC.
To these data we add that 48.4 million consumers in Europe accessed social networks from their mobile phone during the last year.
According to a study conducted by Ipsos Media CT Germany, commissioned by Google, 20% of mobile phone users access the Internet through their phone. To which is added another great revelation: is the world leader in this use. Can you imagine how many potential customers swarm through those connections?
With these numbers on the table it is surprising to discover that, currently, only 10% of large companies have developed mobile marketing campaigns and only 5% of the sites of the major brands are optimized to navigate through the mobile.
With everything, from the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) ensure that the investment in Mobile Marketing exceeded last year 63 million euros, representing an increase of 67% over the last year and 66% in the last three months, according to InMobi, the largest independent mobile advertising network. Add and follow!
It seems clear that we must take action and integrate this support into the company’s online marketing strategy if we do not want an “out of play” to make us lose the competitiveness match. The Qweb specialists give us some tips collected from the best coaches on the strategic moves that can bring you closer to a win by a landslide.
10 Steps to get started in mobile marketing and extrapolate it to your commercial strategy:
1. Knows the environment and empathizes with users: It has always been said that “you have to be a rower before you take the rudder, have been in the bow and observed the winds before governing the ship”; what applied to this context is an invitation to first know as a user the platform in which we will operate as service providers afterwards. To understand the mobile user and improve their experience, the first step is to become one of them and look through their eyes, this way we will detect the main errors or deficiencies and we will propose improvements that will result in a better customer service.
2. Create a mobile version of your page.Most web pages are loaded with errors in mobile devices unless we “version” them as if they were a great musical success. Currently there are companies and tools (such as Movicanvas.com, Mobify.com or the WordPress Wp-touch plugin) that are dedicated to translating our pages to their mobile version. The content must be compatible with all mobile platforms, the page must be optimized to load quickly and it is easy to navigate through a small screen.
3. Customize the message.Advertising campaigns for mobile devices are characterized by requiring more personalization, since the messages are not as massive as in other media. Therefore, it is recommended to personalize a product or service through, for example, the development of a specific mobile application or an original and attractive message with a “call to action”. The message that is transmitted through the mobile is much more instantaneous, also increasing the level of interactivity. The most effective is to clearly separate the advertising campaigns that will be launched through these devices from which they will be oriented to traditional digital connections, always adapting the message to the medium.
4. Send clear, concise and direct information.The information we provide through mobile devices should stand out for its brevity and simplicity, but, above all, for being useful for the user. We adapt our messages thinking that by reducing the reading surface and changing habits, users seek information immediacy. It is important to facilitate the purchase with the minimum number of clicks, because if the process is very tedious, the user will most likely give up his impulse.
5. Generate experiences for users.The limitations of the mobile interface are currently compensated by mobile experiences, taking advantage of the user’s geolocation, for example, because, depending on the experiences they are experiencing at any given moment, they may be interested in different topics, products or services and send them specific messages. Through mobile it is very easy to detect the location, the usual queries, etc., and offer proposals that link it to your business: discounts, checkins, promotions, badges, incentives … Invite them to comment, to make suggestions , etc. Using resources such as layers or augmented reality (RA) will improve the user experience and facilitate interaction.
6. Take advantage of QR codes.QR codes allow us to obtain information once they have been scanned with the camera of a smartphone, so we can extrapolate our offline advertising to mobile users, for example, and get the most out of these campaigns.
7. Increase the conversion by proximity, geolocalize yourself!Users increasingly apply technology to their daily life and it is usual to make a query about a good restaurant near home or the city we are visiting, for example. It is in these cases where we must achieve greater visibility in platforms that geolocate such as Google place, Facebook place, Foursquare, Gowalla, etc., which are especially useful for businesses with physical headquarters. In addition to appearing in your search results, it would be interesting to launch promotions and special discounts on these platforms. Today it is very easy to be present also in local directories, and if you are a proactive entrepreneur you will optimize your cards “selling yourself” in each portal.
8. Develop mobile APP.The applications we offer should be simple to avoid generating errors and to be easy to use. If we have a clothing store we can develop an APP with a virtual mannequin on which the user creates different looks with our clothes or, if we are restaurateurs, present the different dishes for the client to design a menu a la carte. We seek to seduce our public, to propose that they play with us, to flirt with what we are willing to offer them; the conversion will be the next immediate objective. These applications can be developed through free platforms such as Appmakr.com, for example, although there are also developers who offer their own free or paid in specialized stores such as App Store or Android Market (now, Google Play).
9. Discover PPC Campaigns for mobile. Due to the large amount of traffic generated by mobile devices, specialized platforms have emerged in Pay Per Click campaigns through mobile phones and at a lower price than traditional PPCs. These portals include Admob or iAd, belonging to Google and Yahoo, respectively.
10. Measure in real time.Unlike other supports, the mobile online environment allows you to measure in real time the effectiveness of an action and to rectify it if the impact is not the desired one. The monitoring of results allows us to apply corrective measures that can modify the impact of our campaign: we will analyze what percentage of visits comes from mobile devices, the number of downloads of applications and uses, the time spent on them and in each one of our pages, landing page, finished purchases, etc. The metric allows us to draw conclusions and advance the global strategy of marketing and corporate communication.