7 Mobile marketing best practices for small businesses

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Mobile marketing is by far the best strategy you could use to grow your business because it instantly reaches the audience you’re targeting on any device. The following statistics offer a clear picture of how effective this strategy is and how it impacts consumers in a positive way:

• 41% of consumers would rather receive brand updates via SMS versus email
• 45% of clients reply to messages from brands they follow
• The average American will check his/her smartphone approximately 160 times a day
• 95% of text messages are read and replied to in the first three minutes after being received

Before you start your mobile marketing campaign, pay attention to the following marketing strategies to ensure you achieve the best results:

1. Optimize your site for mobile traffic

When you send your mobile visitors to a desktop or non-responsive version of your website you stand to lose a large part of your audience.

The latest stats

collected by Broad Band Search show that mobile digital media time in the US is now significantly higher (55%) compared to desktop (42%).

Mobile marketing is a must if you want to grow your small business because it offers a serious edge over that part of your competition that is not applying mobile strategies yet.

A desktop version of your site on a mobile device would typically deliver a disappointing experience to your visitors. Keep in mind that mobile users are busy and easily distracted.

So, what can you do to create an excellent mobile experience for your customers?

First, you should put yourself in your customer’s shoes. There are some questions that are inherent to each buyer’s persona. However, there are other general questions that you should be able to answer to assess whether you’re providing the best mobile experience:

• Does my mobile website have a simple navigation structure?
• Does it have a quick page load time?
• Are buttons and clickable elements easy to tap on?
• How easy is it for customers to purchase/subscribe via their mobile devices?
• How long is my mobile content?

Why are these questions so important? If mobile users have to wait for more than 3 seconds for your page to load, or if they have trouble going from page to page to find the information they want, they become frustrated and won’t give your product another shot.

When you’re building your mobile website, make sure to keep content brief and to the point. Maybe it’s a good opportunity to use more visual elements. But this will be determined by your target audience, so if you have two different ideas, remember that A/B testing always helps.

2. Track your mobile customer behavior

If you don’t consider how consumers or site visitors are interacting with your content on their mobile devices, you may lose sight of where they are along the sales funnel and miss the opportunity to send targeted messages their way.

Customers’ behavior is not the same in desktop and mobile environments. Once you launch your mobile-friendly website, remember to check your mobile analytics.

You can do this by filtering traffic according to the device in Google Analytics and comparing engagement metrics to those originating from users on desktop devices. We also recommend setting up heatmaps and recordings to see exactly how visitors interact with your mobile site.

This way, you’ll be able to see if your mobile content needs adjusting. Do not assume that if your desktop version is performing well, your mobile is doing well too.

When you’re analyzing your mobile analytics, you should be able to answer the following questions:

• How many people are coming to our site via mobile?
• What keywords do mobile users use to find you?

Do mobile users stick around or simply access the page and then leave?

• How does my mobile site convert mobile traffic?

Having these analytics discriminated from the desktop version will allow you to see how you are doing with your mobile marketing strategy, which will then allow you to optimize it even further.

3. Optimize your mobile ad copy

Setting up your Google or Bing Ads campaign can be really time-consuming, and by the time you create your mobile ad content, you might find it difficult to come up with fresh, innovative ideas. You might decide to use the same content that you’ve created for your desktop ads.

If you do that, you will have to optimize ads and extensions for mobile devices, meaning you have to adjust your ad length. Google Ad policies mention that mobile ads should be shorter than 60 characters, and links should be between 15 and 17 characters. Here’s an example of how an ad should look:

4. Leverage the power of SMS marketing

Text messages have the highest open rate on the market: according to studies, 98% of text messages are opened and read.

How can you use SMS to its full potential? One of the most important benefits of SMS is its ability to catch the attention of potential customers “on the fly”. For example, you could use SMS messaging for:

• Making announcements
• Giving out a coupon or promotion
• Sending offers
• Carrying out to-do surveys
• Sending traffic to your landing page
• Increasing brand awareness
• Building customer loyalty
• Providing customer support

There are plenty of ways to use SMS marketing, and they work like a charm for small businesses. Here are some great ideas for small business owners to check.

5. Integrate mobile marketing into your marketing strategy

You need to remember that mobile marketing is just another tool in your marketing toolbox. Use it as a part of your whole strategy, not as a stand-alone solution.

Before you start creating your mobile campaign, you should be able to answer the following questions:

• Who are your customers, and who are you trying to reach?
• How will your target audience gain access to your mobile content?
• Who will want to engage with your mobile content?
• What is the specific goal your mobile customers have?

Addressing these questions will give you a good idea of the role your mobile marketing strategy should play. It’s important for you to understand how your mobile marketing is going to co-exist with your existing email marketing, landing pages, PPC ads, and inbound marketing in general. Remember: mobile marketing doesn’t exist solely on its own.

6. Make your emails mobile-friendly

Most smartphone users check their mailboxes on the go. If you want your email to get opened, read, and clicked on, you need to provide a seamless mobile experience. Here are some tested tips to help you optimize mobile navigation:

• Use a responsive template; your email should look good to both desktop and mobile users.
• Go easy on the design; try not to insert large images in your email — they might take forever to load.
• Choose every word wisely; for instance, my iPhone 13 Pro only displays the first 37 characters of a subject line when the device is held vertically.

• Break your text into small paragraphs and add buttons instead of links; this will make it easier for your mobile users to read your emails
• Use email marketing tools to improve your conversion rates and to ease the whole process of sending emails; check this Essential Guide to Ecommerce Email Marketing
  that will help you understand your mobile customers better and create emails that won’t go unnoticed

7. Look into location-based marketing

The best strategy you could use to target mobile users from a specific area is called geofencing. It enables advertisers to send promotional messages to users who enter their area, using their phone’s GPS signals.

This works very well for e-commerce stores but also for small businesses that offer takeout services, local food stores, pharmacies, etc. Marketers who integrate location-based marketing in their business growth strategy have noticed an 85%
customer base increase, and numbers kept getting better.

Conclusion

Mobile marketing is not just a way to target clients in the hopes of closing a sale. It is your company’s best shot at establishing long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with its clients. It is cost-effective , it offers immediate benefits, and with 6.648 billion mobile phone users out there, it is the only sustainable way to grow your business.