5 Tips to Boost Your Brand’s Mobile Strategy

Mobile devices have had an enormous impact on our personal and professional lives in recent years. Most people can’t go long without checking their smartphone. They check their phones while walking down the street, in a grocery store, in meetings, and even in their cars. People are constantly online.

 

Mobile devices have changed the business landscape. They’ve changed the way consumers make purchases online and the buyer’s journey — the steps or actions consumers take before, during, and after a purchase. Consumers may start searching for an item on their desktop, go to a store, and then make a purchase from their mobile device. The buyer’s journey has become much more non-linear. According to Forrester, “75% of US online adults use 2+ devices connected to the Internet and 67% have switched devices while completing common tasks.”

 

So, how do businesses and marketers adapt to these changes? How do they develop a mobile marketing strategy that is responsive to the needs of their target audience and take into account where their audience is at in the buyer’s journey? We’ve come up with five ways to help you do that. Implementing the following five tips will help you to boost your brand’s mobile strategy and better engage your audience.

 

1) Define Your Mobile Marketing Objectives and Goals

 As with any marketing strategy, it’s important to start by defining your objectives and goals. What do you hope to achieve? Do you want to increase lead generation, build more brand awareness, increase sales? Your clearly defined objectives and goals are the foundation upon which you’ll build the rest of your mobile strategy.

 

To set your objectives and goals, start by thinking about where you want to be. Then work backwards by listing the steps you’ll need to take to get to that place. The steps you’ll need to take may include things that you are currently doing as well as things you’re not doing.

 

2) Understand Your Audience

 It’s important to understand who will be interacting with your mobile content. What are their wants, needs, expectations, and preferences? Understanding your audience involves understanding their demographics, the type of devices they use as well as the kind of activities they engage in on those devices. Understanding your audience will help you to create a mobile experience that will engage your users and turn them into returning visitors.

 

Understanding your audience requires research and observation. You can begin the research process by gathering reports or other educational and research material your company or client has produced over the last couple of years. You could also interview others who have direct contact with people in your audience. You can also use your current web analytics tool to learn more about who’s currently visiting your site.

 

3) Create Content That’s Useful and Usable Across Different Devices

Content is the one commonality between different devices. No matter what device or platform a consumer is using, there will always be content. That’s why it’s so important for content to be useful and usable regardless of whether a consumer is using a smartphone, desktop, tablet, or some other device.

 

Understanding context is an essential part of creating great content. A one-size-fits-all approach won’t work. As marketers, we need to create content that is compatible with different devices and relevant to the time of day and setting in which a user is viewing the content. For example, the way a user engages with content in the morning before work may be different than the way they engage with content in the evening while sitting on the couch watching TV.

 

4) Optimize Your Site for Mobile

 Even though an increasing number of people are making purchases from their phones, most people still don’t believe that phones provide the best shopping experience. For that reason, websites need to be better optimized for mobile.

 

Optimizing a site for mobile means more than just making sure a site is responsive to mobile devices. It also means that certain elements on a site should be adapted for better viewing on mobile devices. For example, visitors are less likely to fill out a long form on a mobile device. If a site contains a long form, the form should be shortened on mobile devices. However, it’s important to keep in mind that even though different elements should be optimized, a site shouldn’t be stripped down so much that users can’t find what they need.

 

5) Use segmentation

Segmentation is all about grouping leads and customers based on similar characteristics. Segmentation can be used to send personalized content to specific groups. Segmentation can also be used with location-based technology to send notifications that alert consumers of relevant deals and promotions at stores near their location. When done effectively, segmentation can help create content and calls-to-action that are relevant and appeal to each segmented group.

 

Photo credit: HubSpot