Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing has become one of the most important marketing tool in digital marketing. To have a competitive advantage most of the established companies are investing in mobile marketing.  Recently Facebook stock jumped more than 30% because of its recent revenue growth in the mobile sector.  For companies that want to be successful should be successful in mobile marketing.  There are different aspects of mobile marketing; here are some characteristics of mobile marketing:

• Immediacy - Mobile users usually keep their phones within easy reach, so your message can be received within seconds of it being sent. Even if the device is in standby mode, your message will be seen as soon as the customer or client turns the phone on.
• A 100% opt-in form of marketing - Unlike direct mail, where businesses can purchase a mailing list, a customer has to provide their phone number in order to receive mobile offers. In most cases, these consumers are previous customers who have a history with a business and want to receive offers from them. This results in less waste and higher response rates.
• Personalization - Because messages are only sent to customers who have opted-in, personalized offers and content can be sent to increase response rates. Marketers can even open up direct dialogues with users via text messaging and get instant customer feedback.
• Mobility - Customers can receive your message on their mobile device anytime, anywhere versus needing a computer, radio or TV to receive it. There are even programs that can generate an offer any time a customer gets within a specified distance of your business.
• Affordability - Mobile marketing can be very easily and economically integrated with most business’s marketing programs to help increase response rates. And, like most mediums, the more customers you reach, the lower your cost per lead.
• Effectiveness - According to many surveys, text messaging has over a 90% open rate (83% within one hour) and, generally speaking, mobile response rates average around 15%.
• Highly trackable - User response can be tracked almost instantaneously. Plus, mobile marketing can be used to track other marketing methods by including a direct call to action (e.g. “text ‘WINBIG’ to 12345″) in a radio or TV commercial.
• Viral potential- Like email, mobile marketing is easily shared with friends and family. So marketers can get a whole lot more exposure with no additional cost or effort on their part.

 As a business owner one can leverage these special features of mobile marketing and increase revenues. As a matter of fact these these features of mobile marketing gives businesses of all sizes tremendous power to reach to its customer base and reach out to potential new customers.  Here are some of the features of mobile marketing:

• Mobile-friendly websites - One of the best ways to tap mobile users is to make sure your company’s website is mobile-friendly. This means tweaking elements of your website so that any visitor using a mobile browser is able to navigate your site. Another option is to create a specific mobile version (e.g. m.dexknows.com) of your site that looks good on mobile browsers and features your most popular content or functions. Google is featuring mobile-enabled sites on their mobile search browser. So the sooner you can optimize your site for mobile, the more likely you are to appear in the coveted top mobile search results in your category.
• Text messaging - This is perhaps one of the most used methods of mobile marketing, in part because of its high response rate. Text messaging involves sending out short messages (160 characters or less) to phone numbers of prospects and/or customers who have provided their phone numbers. These numbers are often collected through contests, opinion polls and in exchange for consumer discounts.
• Email messaging - These days many customers also read their emails on their mobile devices, so you should keep your main message short and within the screen so they won’t have to scroll down. Another tip is to provide a link to your website within your email so customers can instantly bring up your page without having to remember to visit it the next time they log in on a computer.
• Mobile GPS coupons - Thanks to a struggling economy and numerous new mobile marketing applications, the concept of distributing digital coupons to customers’ mobile devices has really taken off. These new apps automatically retrieve coupons via GPS, eliminating the need for consumers to browse for offers, remember text codes or juggle ZIP codes. Consumers simply use the apps to download a coupon and redeem it by showing their phone screen to the store cashier.
• Mobile commerce - This function allows customers to purchase or order something directly through your mobile site or application. While it may not make sense for many businesses, with more consumers using their mobile devices for shopping, it might be something to consider.
• Reputation management - At the very least, make sure your business listings are correct and up to date on directory sites such as Dexknows.com, reviews sites like Yelp, as well as social-sharing sites such as Facebook or Foursquare. Mobile users turn to these sites when they are out and about shopping or looking for entertainment. Keeping track of this data and making sure it best reflects your business is known as reputation management.

One of the biggest features of mobile marketing is the ability to geographically locate the clients and be able to provide them with information and promotions based on their present location and their personal preferences.  Also this could be done almost instantaneously and if it is done through text message then the clients are more likely to open it and email is effective as well since most of the smart phone users also have their emailed delivered to their smart phones and check them regularly.

Given the rapid changes in mobile technology it is fundamentally important that the businesses reach out to their present and potential customers through mobile devices.  This would keep the businesses up to date and would generate more revenue for them going forward.

Note: Information source: http://www.dexone.com/