Mobile is quickly becoming the focal point of conversation in the board or break room. While it may seem like hype and noise, the fact of the matter is it’s not. As technology adoption continues to rise the time for proactive planning is now! When you cut through clutter what you’ll find is that customers (yours, ours) are spending a lot of time on their mobile devices (smartphones, tablets) – 10% of their time according to Kleiner Perkins among others, yet just 1% of marketing dollars are allocated to mobile as a channel. If history repeats itself, and it will, advertising dollars follow eyeballs and now is the perfect time to activate your mobile marketing strategy. For companies on the fence whether it’s a lack of strategy, resources, or information overload – take a deep breathe. Stop over-thinking it, you need to plan for mobile and you can do it. It’s very simple actually and we’ll outline five practical steps to engage in mobile marketing activities with your customers today. 1. Clarify your purpose – Whether your marketing plans are predicated on driving leads or building awareness, mobile can be a complimentary extension to what you are already doing. Outline your objectives, goals and set expectations - leaning on your internet experiences as a benchmark for success 2. Establish a foundation – Don’t engage in mobile marketing without first creating a mobile experience to drive customers to. Whether that’s an app, website, or optimized landing page – planning for mobile means thinking about technology, creative and the media. Lean on internal expertise or an agency for guidance 3. Leverage familiar programs – Start with familiar programs: search, display (banner, video and rich-media) and email before engaging with mobile originating and emergent areas like SMS/MMS, Barcodes, Augmented Reality or Mobile Visual Search. Your focus, energy and resources, can and should start here
- Search is a prime researching tool, cultivating customers more efficiently (lower CPC’s) and effectively (higher CTRs) than PC search. SEO has a place both on the web and the growing app marketplace and local search is frankly more important on a mobile device. Start by building unique keywords and ad groups with paid, a mobile site map with SEO and leveraging Google+ and Bing along with “tier 2” partners like Yellow Pages and Where.com for local search
- Email will reach a captive, engaged audience. Between 10 – 20% of emails are opened on a mobile device. Of those opened according to a study by eConsultancy, 63% of non-optimized emails are either deleted or closed immediately if they aren’t mobile compatible. Start with optimizing your templates, adding mobile phone capture and then define a cross-channel data capture strategy
- Display is great for branding. In-app display, video and rich media are considered growth areas given the rise of app adoption, faster networks “quicker downloads” and richer screen quality allotting for better engagement and customization. Start with basic internet tactics and delivery benchmarks, then add more refined targeting by location and at point-of-sale, as you test-n-learn
4. Plan a Budget – Rethink your marketing allocations (offline and online) and use the Kleiner Perkins consumption model as a guidepost to define an appropriate target. Start with 10% as a benchmark. Then lean on customer research. Poll your customers! Ask them where their media consumption lies - marry it up to your benchmark and iterate. We are seeing our Clients spend anywhere between 5 and 10% of their budgets in mobile marketing, but every Client has unique objectives and goals, so allocations will vary 5. Refine, Revise, Repeat - Even the innovators are still testing and continually refining and it’s okay to fail the first time. Repetition now will pay dividends later In a time of exponential growth, as marketers, the worst thing you can do is nothing at all. Mobile is the bright shiny object in the room, but if you follow these five core tenants your likelihood of success will increase.