What’s in this article:

• How to best incorporate smartphones and mobile usage into every aspect of your marketing plan
• Anytime you’re able to create a targeted, personalized experience for your customers, you’re going to have a win, especially on a mobile device – here are five ways to go about it

With more than 3 billion smartphone users across the world — and that number is expected to grow by several hundred million in the next few years — there’s no denying the importance of mobile devices. They are, quite literally, everywhere.

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The pandemic has also helped drive mobile use — not that these devices needed much help — as more people are turning to their phones for tasks like ordering food or a new outfit, instead of shopping in-person or on a desktop like they might have in the past. It also led to an increase in late-night online searches.

But even when the pandemic is over, the prominence of mobile devices won’t be. Here’s more proof that reaching mobile devices needs to be a top priority for marketers:

• Mobile search ad spending in the United States is expected to grow from $29 billion in 2019 to $47 billion in 2024.
• More than half of all online transactions are completed on mobile devices.

It’s clear that the decision isn’t whether or not to make mobile usage part of marketing strategies, but how to best incorporate smartphones and their usage into every aspect of a marketer’s plan. Even beyond that, marketers are tasked with looking at how mobile devices have changed the way consumers search, engage, and make purchases — and ensuring their campaigns and strategies align with those behaviors. That’s why mobile marketing can be such a game-changer. Here are five ways you can win at mobile marketing.

Focus on customer journey

Mobile marketing is a digital strategy focused on reaching consumers on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. That can be done through texts, social media, or apps. Just like receiving a text message is more personal than getting an email, mobile marketing content needs to be highly personalized and targeted to your audience. You want your content to resonate with your customers, so make sure you know them (ex. data, research, surveys, calls, etc.) and where they are in the sales journey.

No matter where a customer falls, there should be mobile components throughout their journey. You wouldn’t want mobile-friendly content for the awareness stage and then nothing if they click through for content in the consideration state. It needs to be a seamless transition from one stage to the next, no matter if they are on a desktop or mobile device.

Locate your customers

Whether you have a local, brick-and-mortar store or only an e-commerce site, you can put location-based marketing techniques to work for your business. In your mobile app, set up geofencing to send targeted campaigns to customers within a given geographic radius. That allows you to reach people in that virtual boundary, providing personalized, targeted content you know applies to them. Here are a few ways you could use this tactic:

• Send deals when they are near your store
• Recommend local services
• Create a campaign around a local event, data, etc.

Geofencing in itself isn’t new, and several service companies have used it with their company vehicles for years. However, the applications for mobile marketing have expanded and become more important as smartphone usage continues to rise — and that trend will continue. More than half of consumers visited a specific retailer after receiving a location-based alert.

To take that level of personalization even further, compare your data from geofencing with other data you’ve collected on customers. For example, if you look at purchase history for customers within a certain area, you may notice they prefer a certain product or day of shopping. Then, you can tailor your promotions to those findings.

Think small

We’d wager the vast majority of marketers have ensured their sites and email campaigns are optimized for mobile. (If you haven’t, get on that right now.) However, optimization is different from making your site mobile-friendly — and it’s not just a matter of semantics.

Ensuring your site and campaigns are mobile-friendly means it isn’t only possible to view them correctly on a mobile device (like with optimization), but they were also designed to be viewed on one. The easier you make something for consumers, the more likely they are to do (and enjoy) it.

People consume content differently on mobile devices, compared to desktops. That means your content needs to include easy-to-see headlines, shorter sentences, and engaging videos for when they don’t feel like reading. Speaking of videos, make sure you include captions, considering the majority watch them without the sound on.

Work with virtual assistants

In a time where Siri and the other virtual assistants are helping consumers find more information than ever, be sure these technologies are able to find your brand. Just in the United States, there are more than 110 million virtual assistant users, with the software being especially popular in smartphones. And do you know the most popular topics people use these assistants to search for? They use them to research products, add items to their shopping list, make purchases, and reorder items.

So, how can you improve your brand’s voice search optimization? Here are a few ways to do that:

• Understand your audience and their device behavior
• Incorporate conversational language and keywords in your content (think what questions someone might ask to pull up your content)
• Have a FAQs page — since most things people say to their virtual assistant will be in the form of a question
• Make sure your site and materials include physical addresses/locations where people can turn to if they ask a local question

Think about the type of consumers you want to find your site. For example, a lawn care company would want to attract people asking, “How do I kill weeds in my yard?” So, they would make sure their site pulls up for that question.

Create an interactive experience

What’s more personalized than something the consumer creates for themself? That’s exactly what Domino’s Pizza got its customers to do with its creation app. This app is basically a pizza creation game, allowing users to order the exact pizza they create in the game. And it worked. They saw a 50-percent cost reduction in cost per click, 53 percent of digital sales were through the app, and a 63-percent overall increase in sales.

Anytime you’re able to create a targeted, personalized experience for your customers, you’re going to have a win, especially on a mobile device. With someone’s phone being such a vital piece of technology for most nowadays, it’s imperative to make mobile marketing a key component of your strategy.

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