All start-up companies aim to put together a solid business plan and a comprehensive marketing strategy to set sail and go on the challenging journey of entrepreneurship. No matter if you sell products or provide services, your marketing efforts always focus on generating new leads, keeping customers close to the brand, turning them into faithful spokespeople, and, ultimately, grow your client portfolio.
Now that you put together a rigorous business plan, it’s time to take a look at marketing. It understandably comes in many shapes and sizes. You have traditional marketing, nonlinear marketing, business storytelling, and mobile marketing automation, which can be a part of your nonlinear strategies. This particular approach is on the rise lately, and we should take a closer look at it and see when and why you should use it for your start-up business.
What is Mobile Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation, in general, represents the introduction and use of software, tools, templates, rules, and formulas to make it easier to communicate with your clients, partners, and fans. In other words, you use automation when you have to implement repetitive tasks, or you have to provide the same information over and over again to ease the communication process and save your company and employees precious time. This is a smart idea when it comes to traditional marketing and many companies successfully implement such strategies.
However, we all know that if you don’t go mobile, you barely exist. Mobile marketing comes as an answer to the question “how do we get to the people using mobile devices 90% of their time?” This is why mobile marketing is so popular nowadays, and if you didn’t tap into this pool of endless possibilities, you should start right now. People are mobile and so should you become.
Let’s now put together these two notions: marketing automation and mobile marketing. What is mobile marketing automation and why should you implement it as a start-up?
- Traditional marketing doesn’t cover the mobile-only data you need
Traditional marketing automation can help you gather and store users’ information and allow you to separate your messages according to the collected data. But traditional platforms can go that far. They don’t help you actually communicate with users via push messages or through wearable gadgets. On the other hand, mobile marketing automation platforms include the capabilities of most traditional automation tools, with the added benefit of also incorporating mobile-only data, allowing you to engage in a more personal, real-time relationship with each individual customer. - It is highly functional
Mobile marketing automation helps you to expand your communication channels and manage them properly. It also allows you to segment your target groups and address them in a personalized manner – sending real-time messages to people no matter where they are and what they do is a privilege not many have. Focus on the word “mobile” – you will have the opportunity to achieve a deeper integration with other relevant data sources and installed apps. - It allows plenty of A/B testing and tweaking
Traditional marketing also allows for proper A/B testing, but mobile marketing automation can be subjected to more refined, deeper analyses. It’s one thing to test the full landing page of your website and factor in each and every of the variables, starting with the “Buy” button color and ending with the position of tabs in the bottom menu bar. It’s another to test in between two text messages. - It allows the expansion of your communication channels
Email, newsletters, and social media campaigns have their limitations when it comes to expanding your communication channels. They don’t work veritably in real time, and they can’t cover all your needs. Mobile marketing automation, however, when properly optimized, offers you greater access to the outside world. You can focus your efforts on push notifications and messages, in-app messages and notifications, SMS/MMS, wearable device notifications, and many more.
Say you want to take a survey or a poll and involve your customers in your business on a more personal level. Mobile marketing automation allows you to send a personalized message to the people you want to poll. This interactive push notification can come together with a “yes” and “no” button, and all your customers have to do is the push the one that conveys their answers. In this manner, you can cover tens to thousands of people at the same time, and get the results in the blink of an eye. - It allows your marketers to become more and more creative
You know routine and repetition kill creativity, and you often hear your marketing team complaining of being too tense and too pressured by recurring marketing tasks to actually come up with a smart and creative ideas to push things forward. Mobile marketing automation takes this edge away. You don’t have to stress marketers and engineers to solve the intricacies of iOS vs. Android push notifications’ tech complexity. The mobile marketing automation platforms address many of these hi-tech requirements, allowing you to create the message, set the parameters, and deliver it to the world.
Meanwhile, your marketing team can actually get focused on creating good content. This is a burden you won’t get away from. If mobile marketing automation is the vessel carrying your message, you still have to come up with the message, campaign, offer, notification, and so on. But since you don’t have to invest time, money, and effort in the technological process anymore, you can invest in creating innovative campaigns and, at the end of the day, turn leads into customers.
Mobile marketing automation reaches people in a fast and very personal manner. You can take the opportunity as a start-up and tailor business storytelling campaigns, “get to know my brand” ones, engagement campaigns, onboard campaigns, flash discounts, and many other more. Pick your right mobile marketing tools and platforms that suit your business best and draw people closer to you!
About the author
Jenny M. Clint is a Marketing Strategist and a contributing author for Electrodry. She’s always been intrinsically driven to help others out so she’s made it her personal and professional mission to guide people through their new entrepreneurial quests and small business endeavors. You can connect with Jenny on Twitter @Jennyclint88
