Mobile marketing is a fast paced and exciting way to get the word out about your product or services. Since your contact is direct to the customer, you need to make sure you get it right the first time or risk making a bad impression, losing a potential sale, and quite possibly garnering an unfavorable business reputation. Read on for some valuable advice on mobile marketing done right!
Invest some time and effort into making your mobile marketing technique personal and customizable. If you are creating an application, make it unique and simple to use and consider providing customers with relevant customization options. If you are not creating a full blown application, at least make your mobile communications engaging and enjoyable.
Understand that mobile marketing is necessary for your business. You need to have a direct method of communication with your customers, and mobile marketing is an immediate way to do it. Setting up mobile marketing is also a great way to truly understand what your customers are interested in, and how to cater to that.
Know your hours. You do not want to be messaging customers while they are sleeping or having dinner. Try to avoid bothering them on holidays or Sundays, unless it is important. Your customer does not always want to be dealing with your texts, so make sure you are only texting at good times.
Never send unnecessary messages to your customers. Only send them information that they’ll find relevant and useful. Random messages can annoy people and reflect poorly on your business. You will actually lose customers if your messages aren’t advantageous to them. Customers aren’t looking for humorous, personal messages from a business they patronize. They’re looking for valuable information and ways to save money.
Be sure that you understand that a mobile site is not just a scaled-down version of your business, but it’s actually a summarized version. Many mobile marketers make the mistake of attempting to scale down their entire business and ultimately end up losing customers. You do not need to create two separate businesses here.
If you’re thinking about expanding out to a different market with a different product, make sure that you start this effort normally first before you branch out to mobile marketing. It’s going to be very difficult to pull people in from the mobile world to your new product, so go with what got you here and just repeat the process.
When you are setting up your marketing adds for cell phones, they must be cross-platform compatible. Every one has a different phone, and you don’t want to end up cutting off some people from seeing your advertisement just because of the phone that they have. Your customers will not switch phones, though they may switch from your product to one that they see all the time on their phone.
Get permission before starting to add cell phone numbers to your database. Getting permission means you have found someone who is interested in your service or product. If you fail to get permission, you are sending messages that will likely never even be read. Sending messages without permission can also be a great way to ruin your reputation.
Use a platform that allows you to personalize your messages by way of tokens. Personalizing something is always a great touch. You can put your recipient’s name in every message making it a little more likely they will want to read it. Just keep in mind the 160 character limit when doing using tokens with email formatting.
It is important to keep track of all the responses that you are getting from your mobile marketing adventure. This will allow you to know if you are doing the right thing, or if you need some improvement somewhere. Use a mobile-only web analytics service to keep track of everything.
QR codes are the wave of the future when it comes to advertising. QR or quick response codes use an image that is scanned into a mobile device and hold a bit of information. Use QR codes to link mobile exclusive discount coupons or product information for your business.
Do not send SMS messages in all capital letters or add multiple exclamation points or question marks for emphasis. The SMS mobile environment is a very personal one. It’s a small amount of text that is tied directly into a location on the mobile device where the user also receives personal communication. Writing messages in all caps or with crazy punctuation can be very off-putting. The all cap message feels like internet screaming and the multiple exclamation points can feel like you are trying to hard to sell your goods or services.
There is so much to consider when taking your business to the mobile marketing arena and so much at stake. Hopefully this article has shed some light on the process and given you some smart tips on how to give your business the right exposure using mobile marketing while avoiding some of the mistakes that could really cost you!