Smartphones are the most popular mobile device. Consumers have them in arm’s reach throughout the day as they are out and about.
Consumers who use a smartphone to research generally has little or limited time, they are travelling or somehow on-the-go and may be feeling a bit rushed or feeling as though they don’t have much time for in-depth research.
Most people now know, even just from personal experience, that using a smartphone to target and engage with a consumer is the way of the future. Mobile is growing and it’s essential for businesses to start focussing on it.
But for many small businesses, the thought of adding even more to a marketing budget that may already be a tight is a daunting task – but it doesn’t have to be. Mobile marketing can potentially lower the costs the more traditional marketing strategies seem to pile up.
So what is mobile marketing? Essentially, all messages and engagement strategies for targeting smartphone consumers need to be very fast, to the point and, most importantly, personalised.
Here are some tactics that can work very well.
SMS Marketing – go paperless!
While significant amounts of traditional direct marketing such as email and leaflets go unread or unnoticed, 97 percent of SMSs are opened typically within minutes of receiving the message.
With these results, it’s no wonder this form of marketing is a trend that businesses – including gyms, beauty salons, retail stores, cafes and dance schools – are tapping into to try to drive better results for their marketing efforts.
But is it right for your business?
If you have a little bit more budget to play around with, do some research into your target market and determine whether they are the right audience for SMS marketing.
It’s all about the customer journey – organisations must understand where and how their customers will be consuming their message. For example; an SMS campaign targeted at a market most likely to be at home will engage differently with the campaign, compared to a consumer who is at work with little down-time throughout the day.
Mobile loyalty
Customer loyalty is booming and mobile presents the perfect opportunity to reduce production costs, encourage new and repeat purchases, increase shopping cart values and ultimately increase the lifetime value of your customer.
Many organisations spend thousands of dollars producing loyalty cards that many consumers hide away in their wallets and or lose easily. Loyalty clubs that are available on mobile provide the user with their own account (that can never be lost or broken) as well as gives the organisation the ability to contact them via their smartphone for special promotions that are targeted to them.
When it comes down to mobile, consumers don’t want to be targeted by marketers just for the sake of marketing. They want personalised messages and promotions that they find valuable to them, that are delivered to them at a time and place they find appropriate.
Push notifications and location based marketing
While mobile data usage is still small compared to other data consumed, the rate at which it is increasing is proof that Australia is becoming more and more mobile based. Organisations must now recognise that mobile is one of the top devices used by consumers to search for products and services.
Organisations can also target their consumers through tapping into their location and taking advantage of location-based technologies such as Google Places. It’s about being accessible via mobile – if one organisation is not found during a mobile search, their competitors certainly will be.
To take advantage of this rise in mobile search, organisations now literally have to get themselves on the (virtual) map. If they aren’t, they are more or less invisible.
Consider the high penetration of smartphone devices in Australia, the increasing penetration of these devices into daily lives and businesses – communication and interaction with customers is becoming increasingly more mobile and if organisations aren’t taking advantage of this trend then they may just be lagging behind the competition.
