Mastering Mobile Marketing: 6 Approaches to Build Impactful Campaigns for Smartphone Users
It doesn’t matter how innovative your business idea is, its success can be wholly dependent on marketing. In a world that’s ever-increasingly mobile, this means that it’s essential that you build impactful marketing campaigns with mobile and smartphone users in mind.
In recent years, mobile browser usage has flipped its desktop counterpart, and currently has a dominance of 52.08% compared to desktop’s 47.92% share.
Though these figures may not seem so surprising, many businesses still create and publish their campaigns wholly through the use of desktop-based software, and thus treat mobile as an afterthought.
As smartphones become continually more intelligent, the rise of mobile-based consumers can present new opportunities to marketers, as well as some challenges based around smaller screen sizes and attention spans to boot.
So, what does a winning mobile marketing strategy look like? Let’s explore six key approaches in building impactful campaigns for smartphone users:
Set Attainable Goals
Before you get to work on crafting your campaign, it’s essential that you set yourself up with clear, attainable goals. These should fall in line with your current phase of business, meaning that if you’re a new startup, your campaign goal should be focused on acquiring your early customers, rather than seeking to achieve 100,000 sales.
Look at your business plan, audience profile, and seek to create marketing goals that conform to what you believe you can achieve in terms of engagement and conversions. This can revolve around sales, gaining social media followers, offering purchase incentives for customers, increasing app downloads, or email subscribers.
Cater to Shifting Attention Spans
Here, it’s vital to note that the average mobile user session lasts just over one minute. This means that complex campaigns aren’t likely to gain the level of engagement that they perhaps deserve.
By adopting a more simplified approach, you can maximize your chances of mobile users researching, analyzing their options, and even converting.
Whether you choose to create a marketing campaign via an app, or simply geared towards mobile browsers, it’s essential that you keep any copy short and snappy, and always keep that all-important minute timeframe in mind. If it takes more than 60 seconds to fully engage in your campaign, look to shorten it.
Remember the Limitations of Mobile
While smartphones are becoming extremely powerful devices, they do still carry a number of limitations when it comes to their desktop counterparts.
For instance, the geographical location of users means that in some areas it can be difficult to load large images or high-quality renderings. With user attention-spans particularly low, this can be extremely hazardous for instances of page abandonment.
Furthermore, the smaller screens mean arduous scrolling through content. This means that sign-up forms should be kept as short as possible to avoid appearing too cumbersome.
In addition to this, typing and clicking on a smartphone can be less natural than desktop, which means that campaigns shouldn’t be spread out across multiple pages. As a rule of thumb, attempt to halve the volume of clicks that would be commonplace on a desktop campaign when appropriating it for mobile.
Cater to the Impulsive Side of Mobile Users
In many cases, users turn to their smartphones as a boredom-killer. This opens the door to a great opportunity for sellers. Mobile marketing can reach people more effectively when they’re looking for something engaging or have nothing else to do with their time.
One of the closest comparisons to this opportunity for mobile marketers is the way many brick and mortar grocery stores and supermarkets would position items alongside their check out lines to catch the interest of those queuing.
This means that marketers can capitalize on the boredom of browsers in a way that desktop can’t replicate. You can work to secure an impulse purchase and even gamify your campaigns by challenging users to complete tasks or answer an interesting question–all of which can be well-received for idle browsers.
Utilize Mobile-Specific Technology
Smartphones are becoming increasingly advanced in terms of computational power and connectivity. In the latest line of iPhone models, Apple’s iPhone 14 can not only utilize 5G connectivity, but it also features an A15 Bionic chipset and 4GB of RAM.
Furthermore, the iPhone 14 also features a True Depth 12-megapixel front camera with Photonic Engine. Although not all users will have the latest iPhone to view campaigns on, these developments represent a more widespread rise in the quality of smartphones across the market, and it means that marketers have the ability to create more ambitious campaigns.
One of the most popular technologies that are used in marketing is augmented reality, and via smartphone cameras, it’s easier than ever to create impactful and immersive experiences for users that wouldn’t be possible on desktop.
One leading example of AR in marketing is IKEA Place, an app that allows users to digitally place IKEA products in their field-of-view. This can help them to see whether certain furniture is suitable in their environment without having to buy and later return an item.
Continually Analyze Your Performance
One of the best things about mobile marketing is that there are plenty of metrics available for you to analyze your performance as you go.
Make sure your analytics fall in line with your campaign goals from the off, and keep an eye on the data as you progress to measure your ROI, campaign limitations, budget, and technical performance.
While mobile marketing campaigns can bring customer engagement to a whole new level, your efforts will be at their most successful when you implement a comprehensive strategy that closely aligns with your ambitions and goals.
By creating campaigns that have a mobile focus in mind, you can escape the limitations of desktop and work on the best features of smartphones. This can help you to embrace more technologies and achieve your goals faster.
