Mobile Marketing 101

The revolutionary shift towards digital means that businesses who do not adapt fast enough will get phased out eventually. As digital marketing continues to evolve, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are recognising the need to give more weight to the mobile platform.

It is projected that mobile ad spend will surpass that of desktop by 2019.ⁱ

With mobile usage penetration rates increasing at an incredible speed, reaching an all-time-high of 82%ⁱⁱ, and smartphone conversion rates exceeding that of desktop, the importance and urgency of tailoring marketing efforts for mobile cannot be neglected.

The mobile movement will only continue to progress and CMOs need to ensure a cohesive mobile marketing strategy to stay relevant with digital consumers. Consider these tips to get started:

The mobile movement will only continue to progress and CMOs need to ensure a cohesive mobile marketing strategy to stay relevant with digital consumers. Consider these tips to get started:

34% didn’t purchase because of a non-mobile friendly interface.ⁱⁱⁱ

Having a mobile-friendly website is no longer optional, it has become a must. Imagine a consumer waiting more than 10 seconds to load the site and finally when he lands, he is faced with a landscape layout and illegibly small text. Conversion is unlikely.

The first step to mobile optimisation is understanding how mobile works. Screen dimensions, operating system, loading time and visual display. Consumers expect speedy loading, parallex scrolling and simplified navigation.

An advantage of mobile marketing is that accurate location-based promotions and messages are enabled. Similar to cookies that capture consumers’ online footprints, location data on mobile can bridge the offline and online gap.

To capture the mobile consumer, develop and test your site for mobile viewing. Also, streamline the user journey so that you minimise the number of click-throughs that the consumer needs to make in order to reach conversion or lead generation.

Check if your site is mobile-friendly using this free Google test.

Craft your content and messaging with the mobile consumer in mind. To make reading easily digestable, have bite-sized reads and avoid huge chunks of text as most mobile devices display content on small screens. Use short titles, snappy paragraphs, lists, subheads and whitespace to declutter your content.

65% of all emails are first opened using a mobile device^iv. Make sure your eDMs are mobile-responsive, meaning that the layout is automatically adjusted based on the device’s screen size. A quick tip is to have your call-to-action button as close to the top as possible and visible enough to facilitate click-throughs.

Also ensure your contact buttons are dummy-proof. This means hyperlinking your email, having a click-to-call phone number and a simple and short contact form.

Popularity of online communication apps such as Whatsapp, Wechat and Telegram also translates to phenomenon of app fatigue and clutter increase. On the flipside, SMS as a channel is uncluttered, familiar and user-friendly, which makes it a great direct-marketing platform. SMS and MMS allows for content to be disseminated to the phone’s native inbox, away from the congested communication apps and hence less likely to get lost in the clutter.

SMS achieves 98% open-rate^v, greatly surpassing emails at 24%.^vi

Up to 90% who open the SMS will read it within three seconds.

SMS has also garnered double the response rate of mobile advertising.^vii 8% of mobile users who received a marketing message via SMS has made an in-store purchase compared to only 4% of mobile users who saw a mobile ad.

Beyond that, with 9 out of 10 consumers wanting to use messaging to talk to businesses^viii, SMS has become an effective platform to facilitate customer service and boost consumer engagement.

The myth is that SMS only allows for short text messages, but the truth is mobile messaging can be so much more. For example, StarHub’s Smart Engagement allows marketers to send rich content such as images, coupons, animated GIFs, and even high-resolution videos via SMS. Businesses who leverage mobile messaging tools will find themselves ahead of the game in terms of consumer engagement.

An advantage of mobile marketing is that accurate location-based promotions and messages are enabled. Similar to cookies that capture consumers’ online footprints, location data on mobile can bridge the offline and online gap.

Capitalising on GPS-enabled technologies like beacon, geo-targeting and geo-fencing, location-based marketing enhances customer targeting. For example, a customer is 50m near your brick-and-mortar store and receives a message on a limited-time offer. This greatly boosts the chances of her checking out your store.

More than just enabling on-the-go marketing, locational data can be used to generate rich insights on consumers’ behaviours in the physical world. Marketers should use such valuable data to better inform decisions in their marketing strategies.

87% always have their smartphone at their side through the day.^ix

With the rapid growth of smart devices over the last decade, we can’t deny the shift to mobile. Mobile marketing is here to stay and it should be a core of every business’ marketing strategy.

ⁱhttps://www.publicismedia.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2017-03-27-aef-executive-summary.pdf

ⁱⁱhttps://sbr.com.sg/information-technology/news/483-million-singaporeans-are-now-online

ⁱⁱⁱhttp://ssl.gstatic.com/think/docs/constantly-connected-executive_infographics.pdf

^ivhttps://www.marketo.com/mobile-marketing/

^vhttps://theblog.adobe.com/marketing-with-98-percent-read-rate-and-10-more-compelling-stats/

^vihttps://neilpatel.com/blog/sms-marketing/

^viihttps://www.textlocal.com/blog/2017/06/16/5-stats-that-prove-2017-is-the-year-for-sms-marketing/

^viiihttps://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/2830410/Resources%20Page%20Assets/SMS%20Infographic%20Images/Consumer%20Messaging%20Infographic.pdf

^ixhttps://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/micro-moments/micromoments-guide-pdf-download/