It’s reported that 40 percent of Black Friday shopping in 2013 was done through mobile devices.
Is there a more legitimate proof that mobile marketing is indeed a thing and that it brings serious results? Probably not.
And that’s why you really should invest in mobile marketing campaigns if you haven’t already. Here are some ideas on how to allocate your mobile budget:
1. Apps
Naturally, apps are the next step up above having a mobile-friendly website.
In other words, a mobile-friendly website is a must these days, there’s just no way around it. However, once you have this covered, the next thing you should look into is creating your own app.
Apps work best for two types of users/customers:
- first time buyers – they can get excited about what you have to offer and make some quick buying decisions,
- loyal customers – they can keep interacting with your brand on a regular basis.
The app itself should offer some exclusive content and not focus purely on promotion.
One of the sneakier methods here is to build a mobile game. Then, you can display various in-app ads that users are quite used to at this point. This presents a lot of opportunities to affiliates as there are many products that you can promote this way.
2. Send SMS Online
Some people say that SMS is the new email. There’s surely some truth to that, especially considering the fact that the average person looks at their phone around 150 times a day. That’s much more frequent than any email interactions they have during the same 24 hour period.
However, offering SMS promotions can be tricky. Mainly, no one will ever opt in to receive promotional messages from you. You have to find an angle to make people interested.
For example, you can offer something like “advice of the day” that’s related to your niche. Such messages have to be short, and preferably link to your site, where you give a more detailed description (along with a promotional message).
3. Social Media Commerce
Selling on social media has always been difficult. People are simply not very receptive to any promotional messages using the standard wording of “buy this!”
That’s why mobile marketers have gotten a lot cleverer recently. They’ve started offering social-media-exclusive promotions.
The main difference between a standard promotion and a social-media-exclusive one is that the latter isn’t available anywhere else.
There are way too many brands doing it wrong right now. The main problem is that they are treating social media as yet another channel to push their products. This doesn’t work because no one cares about your products on social media.
The only way to make them care is to offer something that isn’t available anywhere else.
This sums up our short list. What’s your current approach to mobile marketing? Are you utilizing any of the above?