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Mobile marketing. How to succeed in the era of smartphones?

In this article, the Crowdy team would like to raise such questions as: how to adapt the website for mobile devices, what mobile advertising strategies are and why the speed of loading of a mobile site is crucial. Why it is so important not to turn off the mobile version of your website. Today, the number of mobile users in the world is more than 5 billion. In other words, more than half of the world’s population has a mobile device. In the next four years, that number will increase by 700 million. Smartphones have turned the marketing world upside down, and now that more people are purchasing these new mobile devices than personal computers, they have become the number one device used to access the internet. Marketing has always been about getting the right people in the right place at the right time. Considering that with every passing second, mobiles are becoming an inseparable gadget; one can say where exactly to find your audience: in the mobile devices.

What is Mobile Marketing?

Any promotional activity comprising the usage of digital marketing channels to reach out to customers through their mobile devices defines mobile marketing. A well-designed mobile marketing strategy can work wonders. This is an effective way to get quality leads and engage with customers while promoting products and services. Mobile marketing also supports reaching a wider audience and segmenting the audience—you will choose precisely who to interact with. Once you have studied your customer profile, you target people according to their interests, hobbies, and behaviors. Already mobile devices turned out to be part of the owners. Use this to your advantage. Tailored mobile marketing campaigns can’t help but produce desirable effects.

How does Mobile Marketing work?

Mobile applications, SMS, notifications, geo-marketing, QR codes, social media marketing, voice marketing, mobile search, in-game advertising compose mobile marketing. Once you figure out where your audience spends time and what kind of content is watched on their gadgets—you’ll know which channels to invest in. While technologies are developing, so should your marketing strategies. Create personalized content, and only then will it be really effective. One kind of mobile marketing, location-based or geo-marketing, opens completely new opportunities for audience segmentation and further personalization. With the help of a user’s location data, send a notification with a promotion to their phone the very moment they pass close to your place.

Mobile marketing tips for lead generation and sales growth

Nowadays, people barely let their phones out of their hands, so you can interact with your customers at any moment. Just create a proper Customer Journey Map and apply the effective mobile marketing tools to be able to increase your sales and build customer loyalty. Further on we share with you our observations and what to look out for to get more traffic from mobile phones.

  1. Mobile-friendly site

    First, there’s a mobile-friendly website. After all, in-app purchases are at their rise, and 52% of the total digital traffic belongs to them. Speed up your site, or you will lose visitors. The explanation is that over half leave if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load. Moreover, mobile adaptation of the site will also enhance the ranking of your company’s site in search engines because they are biased towards mobile-friendly sites. In fact, Google moved to page indexing where priority was given to mobile-oriented content back in 2019. Let your website and content go in tuned with mobile devices, and users will have no problem finding the necessary information.

  2. Screen size

    When it involves mobile marketing, the size of the actual device means a great deal. It’s a question of the screen size dictating what kind of content is viewed and how the people respond to various marketing strategies. For example, smartphone users are in search of informative content. However, iPad users are more interested in bright, striking images. In other words, the larger the screen size, the less the meaningfulness in the content.

  3. Push Notifications

    One of the main reasons why smartphones have grown to be one of the most effective ways of customer interaction is push notifications. Push notifications can create value and promote your products, offer a discount, provide brand information, or remind the customer of something important. Note: Rich push notifications, with their large images and buttons, have 2-5% higher CTR compared to regular push notifications. Of course, push notifications, email, and SMS marketing should be combined for better results. Thus, e-mail marketing is an excellent means of converting subscribers into customers and getting responses. As for SMS messaging, it doesn’t require any particular effort to compose a text message. Besides, short text messages are more often opened and read.

  4. Social networks

    Most of the social media traffic originates from mobile devices. Currently, social media users amount to 3.78 million, which comprises 48% of the whole population of the world. That is a very good chance for marketers to find their target audience there. One could give as an example that with the help of social networks, it is possible to communicate with customers and promote certain products to increase brand awareness. Your company has to have accounts on popular platforms: LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, from which you send messages to customers and warm up the audience. Of course, you can do it manually, but we recommend saving time by using a social media marketing automation platform.

  5. Stories

    Now, many brands are already actively integrating the Stories feature into their applications. When Stories went viral on Instagram, it became obvious that nowadays audiences are eager for fast content. Besides, the details of your company’s goods or services may fit the audience on TikTok.

  6. Work with data

    Measure the efficiency of your mobile marketing strategy at every step. Gather information and, by analyzing it, find out which steps have been successful and which ones should be improved. Website traffic, ROI, conversion, landing page—this is the data that will allow you to optimize your mobile marketing strategy, as well as improve your UX design. The number of smartphone users is growing daily, and for this reason, during the next few years, mobile marketing will be the trend. Nowadays, it is an easy and inexpensive channel to receive your target customers using smartphones and tablets. Therefore, create tactics to make a mobile marketing strategy for your company today.

Mobile Marketing in Business

Mobile marketing is designed to provide various goods and services utilizing mobile devices and digital technologies. Competently built advertising strategy helps to attract new leads for a business and build communication with existing customers. Online marketers note the high efficiency of mobile marketing, and the main advantage of this method is the coverage of the largest number of potential customers and their segmentation according to an average portrait of the company’s client. In applying mobile marketing, your company can employ targeted advertising, adjusting it according to the interests of each category of users, behavioral factors, and other criteria. Nowadays, devices are in wide usage among people of all ages; therefore, any business should try and involve mobile marketing tools into the strategy of promoting products or services. The main channels of advertising in mobile devices:

  • Text message – SMS
  • Pop-up notifications
  • Geomarketing
  • QR codes
  • SMM marketing telemarketing
  • Mobile search
  • Marketing in mobile games

To create a strategy of mobile marketing, one needs to analyze where their target audience spends time. Constantly improving digital technologies. This is always factored into promotions, and personalized content has recently proven to work well. Such as the use of user location information, one is in a position to segment audiences and apply this information in sending personalized offers. Such promotional notifications are best sent to potential customers when they are nearest to the advertised establishment. This is known as geomarketing.

Pros and cons of mobile marketing

Mobile marketing has advantages and disadvantages. It is impossible to call this method of promotion ideal. Following key advantages of advertising and PR via mobile devices are highlighted: personalization, sales orientation, and low cost per contact. Compared to Internet marketing, mobile marketing gives the opportunity to a wide audience coverage. Among the disadvantages of this type of promotion following can be pointed out: difficulties in obtaining data, intrusiveness of advertising, high level of competition. Due to that, a number of conditions are limiting the possibility to use a promotion via mobile devices.

It’s worth using mobile marketing tools in cases if a company has the following goals:

  • Customer feedback
  • Increase in the level of customer loyalty
  • Attracting new customers and building relationships with the existing customer base
  • Incentivizing the customer to make repeat orders
  • Increasing customer awareness of the brand, its products or services

Mobile marketing is claimed to be a low-budget but relatively effective way of promotion because one can reach quite a wide range of consumers.

Areas of Application of Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing belongs to the category of the fastest-growing segments not only in digital communications but also in advertising. The mobile marketing strategy employs the utilization of mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, through which it reaches consumers via various channels and formats. Mobile marketing has become an integral part of commercial strategies due to the great variety of tools and wide prospects for personalization. The most widespread sphere of its application is organizing advertising campaigns via mobile applications and sites. Companies send targeted advertising messages through this channel, which later appear in apps or on the mobile version of sites. Analytics and data collection, of course, will enable the fine-tuning of ads toward the users’ interests, location, and behavior.

A very important place in the arsenal of a mobile marketer is occupied by SMS marketing. Despite its relative simplicity, SMS is actually one of the really working ways to deliver personal notifications, promotions, reminders, or special offers directly to a consumer.

The high usage of mobile devices has really enabled geolocation marketing. Offers can be sent or notifications of discounts can be forwarded to consumers when they happen to be near any retail outlet or any particular location. This drives not just traffic but also ensures some sales, as it allows hyper-localized marketing campaigns.

Moreover, it is also employed in increasing customer engagement through the so-called various mobile services and applications associated with customer service, bookings, shopping, and loyalty. For example, several retailers also provide apps to users that enable them to scan products, check their availability, and, at the same time, read reviews in real time.

Similarly, mobile marketing is vastly utilized on social media. This is because, through Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, advertisers can engage audiences with various ad formats from videos to image carousels that work really great in effectively engaging consumers.

With Every Passing Year: The Evolution of Mobile Marketing

With every passing year, due to the continuous development of mobile marketing, it offers companies a growing range of methods to reach and engage customers within an ever-changing digital environment. The fact that this channel allows you not only to reach your target audience anywhere and at any time but also provides powerful means for creating personalized and engaging user experiences turns it into the salient element of the digital marketing strategy of any modern company. Below, we would like to enumerate the main purposes of using mobile marketing:

FMCG

It is in the FMCG market that mobile marketing was initially developed. The most effective ways of using quizzes, lotteries, and raffles via SMS-mailings, QR codes after user identification in this niche.

Retail

In the retail niche, SMS mailings are actively used to notify customers of promotional offers. Quizzes, competitions, and coupon drawings are also common.

Hotel and Restaurant Business

The following mobile marketing tools are used by HoReCa businesses: newsletters, promotional offers, confirmation of bookings, familiarizing with an array of products using Java applications, and internet chats for order placement.

Automotive Business

Car dealers and concerns use web-advertising, free test drives, and drawings. Additionally, customers are sent SMS mailings with special offers. Banners on internet sites are used. For example, a raffle of a domestically produced car when filling up with a particular brand of petrol.

Entertainment Sector

Different mobile marketing tools are applied: photo contests, chat monitors in the clubs, interactive games with rewards, and reservations on a competitive basis.

Banking Sector

Nowadays, the main channel of communicating with customers is mobile banking. Clients can perform some transactions independently, transfer funds, and make applications for loans. Cashback and bonus points motivate them.

Choosing Mobile Marketing Strategy Step by Step

A successful strategy is personalized content, and considering the main trends in technological development, a marketing specialist follows the novelties on the market and in due time puts them into operation in advertising activities. Each new “chip” for smartphones is one more opportunity for promotion that an advertising manager of your company should not miss.

There is a huge amount of variety in mobile marketing tools. Usually, the algorithm of the development of an advertising strategy with the use of certain promotion channels includes the following steps:

1. Stating the Range of Potential Clients of the Company

It is necessary to identify the main features of the target audience and to make a portrait of the buyer of products/customer who can order services of the brand.

2. Segmentation of the Company’s Customers

Segmentation of the customer is a profound, deep research of the target audience. In other words, the biography, age category, hobbies, needs, field of activity are described, where information is searched for, what content they would be interested in, and what possible objections may appear as the most likely answer to the company’s offer. For example, if the target audience is young people, one can segregate customers into school and college students, introverts and extroverts, entertainment lovers, and geeks. It is an important step before choosing the most effective promotional channel. Based on this, personalized promotion can be set up. Based on research, iPhone users under age 25 like gaming and entertainment content, photos, and videos. Android smartphone users fall within the same age bracket as iPhone users, with interests in business, finance, and health-related topics. Another important feature is that the owners of iPhones have an income that is higher than that of Android smartphone owners. They do not show interest in discounts on daily commodities, which is quite unlike the offers by hardware and jewelry shops.

3. Ad Performance Indicators Campaign

It is very important to outline the main indicators of the effectiveness of the promotion channels applied and trace them with Google Analytics’ support. Such services show whether the content was interesting for a target audience, how many bounces and conversions to the site there were, and a lot of other valuable information that is needed by marketing specialists and business owners. It also allows identifying whether optimization of the main pages of the site is needed.

Forms of Mobile Marketing Communication

Depending on the type of communication, advertising agencies distinguish the following forms of mobile marketing both as seller-initiated and buyer-initiated:

Pooling Communications

Pooling communications are targeted at appealing to the widest range of consumers.

Push Communications

Push communications are targeted at directly informing the target audience about the company’s promotional offers.

Pulling communications is widely used in the pool of digital promotion. This is the indirect marketing influence on consumers. The impersonality of advertising, without individual personal addresses, is attached. The meaning of pull communications is to inform the target audience but also to involve potential customers in some dialogue with the company for the further sale of goods or services. They are actively used in digital PR and advertising.

Characteristics and Limitations of Pull Communications:

  • Mass and impersonal.
  • No need for the consent of the buyers.
  • Targeting is a big pre-condition, unlike SPAM.

Main Types of Pull Communications:

  • Advertising links
  • Display advertising
  • Advertising and PR articles
  • Electronic showcase
  • Social media advertising

Push Communications

Push communications or push notifications are communications that a customer initiates. The dialogue starts with the user’s consent to send him messages, for example, when downloading a mobile application. Its installation by default implies the user’s consent to receive notifications.

Characteristics and Limitations of Push Communications:

  • They require direct marketing rather than SPAM mailings.
  • User consent is required, despite this, it is very much perceived as spam in many customers’ mindset.
  • Targeted topics have to be selected for a certain segment.
  • If any of the above requirements are not met, it will allow the user to end the communication: set a message ban or delete the mobile app.

Types of Push Communications:

  • E-mails
  • Messengers
  • Mobile app alerts
  • SMS notifications
  • Online chat rooms

Mobile push notifications are small-screen messages that appear either in the browser or on the screen of a mobile device. Push notifications deliver information about updates, news, events, special offers. Push notifications drive action from the user.

Mobile marketing utilizes push notifications as one of the tools to send personalized information and follow-up reminders on:

  • Logistical information (order and delivery status);
  • Direct-communications: personalized offers, ordering goods in the shopping cart, renewal subscriptions, etc.;
  • Targeted advertising, which may serve to promote interesting merchandise, inform about the start of selling certain products, their availability in stock, special offers, etc.

Mobile Marketing Tools for Business

1. Voicemail Without Calls

This tool sends audio messages to the voicemail boxes of the target audience. This tool of mobile marketing doesn’t irritate or bring a negative reaction from customers due to any ringing or sound notification. Companies can inform users about their products and services without disturbing users with call-less voicemail. A customer will listen to the message at a convenient time, and due to this fact, there is a high likelihood of getting a positive attitude towards the company offer.

2. Multi-channel Approach in Mobile Marketing

This is one in which different marketing channels are combined into a single approach. All capabilities of each relevant promotional tool let you achieve the best results. Mobile multi-channel marketing includes: e-mail newsletters, media advertising, websites, online storefronts. According to marketing experts in B2B, e-mail is the most effective channel for generating user demand. When there is no plus dynamics in the volume of applications, it is necessary to work out the design of the storefront. It is worth paying attention to its informativeness. All this contributes to the development of this channel of promotion.

3. Advertising Campaigns Analytics

With their help, it becomes possible to analyze the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, forecast key indicators. First of all, it is the return on marketing investments, purchase price analytics, and other data from marketing channels. Competently built analytics will help rationally allocate resources and determine the best time to organize advertising campaigns. The available types of marketing analytics differ depending on data volume, a number of promotion channels, and tools used. The type of analytics shall correspond to the objectives of an advertising campaign.

4. Social Networks

Nowadays, this is one of the main promotional resources in any advertising strategy. While elaborating on mobile marketing in social networks, it is necessary to select the appropriate tool. It is complex work on the creation of valuable content, attracting new customers, and stimulating constructive dialogue with consumers. Planning and analytics tools can be given as an example when conducting social media by businesses. They allow tracking the response to publications, developing a content plan, tracking performance indicators, and the results of marketing efforts. With such social media tools, businesses will be able to become more recognizable and responsive in their communications with customers.

5. SMS Marketing and Notifications

SMS marketing is an approach to informing customers with the help of text messages about news, promotions, and updates concerning the company. It helps to build long-lasting, heartfelt relationships with customers. Thanks to it, SMS marketing can be considered an independent channel of promotion, which provides the business with an opportunity to control the content being published, the time of posting, and targeting. Special SMS automation platforms enable the company to send messages to a list of addressees. It should be oriented on the goals, scale, and customer base.

6. Automated Telephone Dialers

Dialers help to optimize telephone operations. Automated dialers are software that replaces manual telephony. Instead, automated dialing is used. A new call is placed as soon as the previous call is dropped. The time taken to call customers is reduced, which helps to maximize sales.

Recommendations for Mobile Marketing

Apply Analytical Insights to a Mobile App

Scores of companies neglect the methods of monitoring user activity in mobile applications. Most of them rely on desktop promotion and don’t understand the difference in traffic attribution of advertising campaigns on mobile devices, applying their own systems. As a result, marketers and business owners often lack correct data on the progress and results of an advertising campaign. It is worth using special services for analytics in a mobile application. With their help, you will be able to track up to thousands of various customer actions, predict their behavior, and attract new users.

Implement Gamification

Due to the digital space’s oversaturation, the interest of users needs to be retained by using additional ways. That is why the use of non-standard advertising formats is recommended. This is more effective than a simple banner on websites.

Optimize Your Site for Mobile Devices

Mobile optimization is the foundation of a good promotion strategy today. Optimization contributes to customer loyalty and improves web page ranking in the search results list. A site that is optimized for mobile ensures better user experiences, which increases engagement and conversion rates.

Advertisement on Mobile, via Third-Party Resources

Programmatic advertising is about purchasing ad placements through automated processes. It is effective for capturing the target audience’s attention, easy to control, and helps protect brand safety. This technology is appropriate for interacting with complex categories of consumers and offers a great cross-platform experience for both brands and users.

How Does the Crowdy Chatbot Drive Mobile Traffic to Your Company’s Website?

Full Adaptation for Mobile Devices

Crowdy is fully optimized to work on mobile devices, ensuring comfortable user experiences from anywhere and on any device. This includes not only visual optimization but also functional aspects, taking into consideration the peculiarities of mobile web surfing. Crowdy’s seamless mobile compatibility allows businesses to engage users wherever they are.

Increasing User Engagement

By responding immediately to users’ questions, Crowdy keeps the user’s attention longer on the site. This is especially important for mobile users, who seek speed and specificity. Crowdy can deliver real-time information, which enhances the user experience and greatly increases leads.

Personalization of Interactions

Crowdy uses various data analytics and machine learning techniques to offer personalized recommendations and responses. Instead of just answering questions, it suggests products or services that match a user’s interests, making it easier to convert a casual visitor into an actual customer.

Data Collection and Analysis of User Behavior

With the integration of analytics tools, Crowdy collects valuable data on user behavior on the site. This data is an invaluable resource for optimizing marketing strategies. By analyzing this data, businesses can understand the factors that influence users’ decisions and improve interactions to boost sales.

Projected Lead Growth

Research shows that the use of Crowdy chatbots on mobile devices can increase lead generation for a business by at least 30%. This is a significant advantage in the competitive race for the attention of potential clients, especially with the growing share of mobile traffic.

Strategic Decision: Enhance Customer Interaction with Crowdy Chatbot

By implementing the Crowdy chatbot on the mobile version of a company’s website, businesses can elevate their level of customer interaction, enhance lead generation, and optimize sales. Investing in this technology not only attracts new customers but also fosters loyalty and improves satisfaction with current users.