Table of Contents
Mobile marketing has become more and more important in recent years.
In this guide, we are going to explore why it is crucial for your small business success that you get into this type of marketing and advertising. We live in a world that has us constantly connected to the web via our smartphones. We carry around tablets and other mobile devices at home and when we travel and won’t leave the house without our phone.
If you’re not reaching your audience on those devices and rely on older, more traditional advertising methods, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities to get in front of potential customers.
This guide will show you why it is important to get into mobile marketing, how to optimize your website to respond well on mobile devices, how to get into the hot new space of mobile apps, and finally we wrap it up with a quick section on mobile advertising.
The goal of this mobile marketing guide is to show you how to use mobile marketing to reach your business goals, reach a larger audience, and get in touch with your target market more often. It gives you another point of contact that may just make the difference when it comes to generating more sales and increasing your bottom line.
If you’ve been thinking about mobile marketing, this is a great place to get started. If you’re not quite convinced yet, keep reading.
We’ll start chapter one with a little deeper discussion of why you need to get into mobile marketing.
The Why
Let me start by asking you a question (or two, or three). How much do you use your smartphone on any given day? Does it go just about anywhere with you? What do you use it for? To browse the web, check on social media, watch YouTube videos?
Guess what. You’re not alone, and I have some stats for you to back it up. The world has gone mobile and no matter who your target audience is, chances are a large chunk of them can be reached via mobile marketing.
Back in 2014 something amazing happened. For the first time in history, the number of global users who have and use a mobile device was higher than the number of computer users. That’s a big deal. As expected, the number of mobile users keeps going up and up year after year.
On top of that, people are spending more time each day on their mobile devices than on desktop computers or laptops. Last year, the average smartphone user was on their phone 3 hours per day. Think about that… that’s a huge amount of time to spend on a phone, and a big chunk of that time is spent online, on apps, or watching videos.
I know what you’re thinking… smartphone users may spend that much time online, but what about mobile users on other types of phones? They are becoming a rare breed. According to a recent Nielson study, 80% of US mobile subscribers own smartphones, and those numbers are still going up year over year.
It doesn’t matter if you have an online business, or a brick and mortar store. You can benefit from mobile marketing and start driving more sales. Up to 17% of mobile searches lead to visits to physical stores. People may be searching for your location, to check your inventory, or to learn more about a particular product. Then they will head out to the store to make the purchase.
Shopping apps are used more and more, and developed even by smaller stores, and even older Americans are shopping on their smartphones. In other words, you really can’t afford to not be in this space.
If you’re still not convinced, here’s a powerful number for you. According to ComScore, US online shopping via mobile devices in 2022 generated $27 Billion. I don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty big chunk of money that I wouldn’t mind having a piece of, even if it’s a tiny piece.
If your business is affected by holiday spending in any way shape or form, you can’t afford to put mobile marketing on the back burner any longer. According to data by Searchmetrics, in 2015, one in five customers relied on their smartphones to research gifts for family and friends. That figure has since more than doubled only seven years later. If that’s where your potential customers are, you must make sure you are ready for it and do what you can to get in front of them.
Finally, let’s talk about SEO – Search Engine Optimization. If you want a chunk of the free traffic coming from Google Searches, you must make sure your site is mobile responsive. If it isn’t, you could be losing out on a steady stream of free traffic. And that’s something no business owner can afford.
Let’s dive right in and look at mobile website optimization in the next chapter.
Mobile Website Optimization
Before you do anything else, please take a moment to check and make sure that your site is mobile responsive. I can’t stress enough how important this is. Any mobile marketing efforts are going to be pretty much useless if your audience isn’t having a good experience once they get to your site on their favorite device or gadget.
A great place to start is with your own phones, tablets, and other devices you have access to. Grab your phone and go to your website, using multiple browsers if possible. Click around and make sure everything is displaying nicely, easy to navigate and most importantly that it works. Don’t forget to test your email opt-ins and of course the shopping cart. Rinse and repeat with any other mobile devices you have in the house. If you have friends or family members with different devices, see if you can borrow them for a few minutes, or ask the owners to check out your site and report back on mobile responsiveness.
Next, it’s a good idea to also check your site with an online tool as well. Google has a great mobile ready test in their webmaster tools. You can find it at this link.
Just enter your website URL, and it will report back if there are any issues. Since this is the standard Google uses when deciding on sending mobile traffic your way, it’s a good idea to check and make sure there are no errors.
What if your site isn’t very mobile friendly, or it comes up with some major issues when you test it? You have a couple of options. You can talk to your website designer or hire someone to fix your site for you. If it’s in your budget, and you have a custom created site, this is probably your best option.
If you’re using WordPress to run your website (or a similar Content Management System), it may be as simple as switching to a theme that’s optimized for mobile. For most of us DIYers, this will be the best option. If this is a little over your technical know-how, particularly when it comes to editing the theme of your site and the design you’re looking for, hire someone to customize it for you. This will usually be a lot cheaper than hiring someone to do custom coding for you.
While you’re at it, don’t forget to check on your shopping cart. If it isn’t working well on mobile, you’re losing out on a lot of sales. Start by contacting the shopping cart provider or creator and see if there is a mobile ready version available. That will be the easiest way to get things fixed. If they don’t have mobile friendly options, updates, or changes available, it may be worth switching to a different cart that makes it easy for people to use on their smartphones. If switching isn’t an option or not something you’re willing to do for one reason or another, you could find a coder that can tweak the code to make it more mobile friendly. Hiring a professional will be your best option here.
Once you get your shopping cart working, take a look at your emails and make sure everything there is mobile responsive. If you already checked your email signup form as part of your site audit, you can move on to the content of your emails. If you haven’t done that yet, sign up from your mobile device and make sure everything is working well. Is it easy to find the signup form? Go through the process of signing up properly, etc. Don’t forget to check that thank-you pages are displaying along with any special offers or ads you are displaying on there to monetize your list building.
Next look at the content you’re sending out in your emails. Do the emails themselves display well on a smartphone? Are they easy to read and do the links work from those devices? If you’re sending out a weekly or monthly newsletter or flier, have a look at that as well. Is it easy to download if needed, and again, is it easy to consume from a mobile device like a phone or tablet. You may also want to look at file sizes. This is particularly important when you include a lot of images and multimedia files. You don’t want to have mobile subscribers unsubscribe because your email content eats up a big chunk of their data plan. Once you’ve checked everything out yourself, consider polling your subscribers to learn more about how many of them access your messages via mobile devices and how well that is working for them.
Your auto-responder service data is another great place to get some of this information. In the reporting section of your dashboard, you should have some good data on how many subscribers are mainly on mobile. Compare this date with unsubscribes to see at a glance if a large portion of your mobile subscribers unsubscribe after a few days or weeks. If so, you may have some issues that you should address before driving more mobile traffic.
Since we’re talking about data, let me tell you about another great place to find mobile usage information. It’s your website stats. If you have Google Analytics or a similar program installed, you should be able to pull some good data on mobile usage, mobile search and the likes. You want to look at things like:
Page Views
The first thing you want to do is look at your page views and then look at how many of them are viewed via mobile devices. Chances are, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how many people are accessing your site through their mobile devices already. This is particularly true if your site is already mobile ready. Looking at this data alone will show you just how much of your audience is accessing your site through their smartphones and tablets.
If you don’t see at least 30% of your traffic coming from mobile devices, you may have an issue that you should investigate right away. Go back and recheck that your website is mobile ready. Make changes as needed, give it a few weeks, and keep an eye on your mobile page views. You should start to see some increases that are unrelated to any mobile advertising you do.
Looking into individual pages that get a lot of mobile views can also be very telling. Try to put yourself into your audience’s mind. Is there a reason this page is popular for someone on their mobile device?
If you’re getting a lot of search engine traffic, particularly from mobile devices, is there something that makes these pages different from the rest of the ones on your site?
Maybe you don’t include a particular ad, widget, or plugin on those pages that makes it more mobile friendly. This is important information to have.
Finally, look at where the traffic is coming from if it isn’t search. Do they come through a particular social network, or a link from a different site or forum? If so, these may be good sites and networks to engage on, particularly to reach your mobile audience.
Bounce Rate
Something else worth looking at is the bounce rate. Any good website stats program should give you this data. Again, my personal favorite is Google Analytics.
It’s free, and it gives you all sorts of insightful data. In this case, we want to look at the bounce rate of people accessing your site via a mobile device.
But what exactly is a bounce rate? Here’s a good definition for you:
Pretty straight forward, right? In almost all cases, you want visitors to spend time on your site and browse around. If they leave right away, it’s a sure sign that either your content isn’t of interest to them, or the page isn’t displaying properly.
Look at your bounce rate for mobile and compare it to the rate for people accessing your site via desktop and laptop computer.
If your bounce rate for mobile is much higher than your regular bounce rate, there’s something going on with your site that makes it less attractive to mobile users.
Investigate, figure out what it is and fix it.
You know you’ve nailed it when your bounce rate stays about the same no matter what device your site is viewed from.
Sales Conversion
Let’s dig back into the website analytics data one more time. The last figure you want to take a closer look at is sales conversion. Depending on how you have tracking set up, this could be in your Google Analytics account, in your shopping cart software, or in the dashboard for a third party tracking service.
Looking at conversion rates, and comparing your regular sales conversion to that of sales made from mobile devices only, can tell you a lot of things. It can tell you how easy it is to order from a smartphone or other mobile device. It can also tell you if your target audience is interested in buying products from their devices. If, for example, you know that your sales pages and shopping cart work well on mobile, and you’re still not seeing a lot of sales, this may mean that your target audience isn’t comfortable making those purchases on their phone. It could be the price point, it could be the age or another demographic aspect of your ideal customer.
In this particular case, you don’t want to spend a lot of money on mobile advertisements designed to entice people to buy your products. Instead, your mobile marketing efforts and cash may be better spent on getting them on your list, so you can email them and get them to visit your online store from their laptop, where you know the sales will convert.
Now that you have a good idea of what to look for when it comes to mobile optimization and data, it’s time to dig in and make a plan of action. Figure out what you need to change, get to work, or hire someone to do the work for you.
Dig through your data and make the same smart marketing decisions based on the information you find there. In other words, get all aspects of your website mobile ready and learn as much as you can about how your particular target audience feels about mobile devices. Then get ready for the next fun mobile marketing project – mobile apps.
Mobile App Development
Mobile marketing is great, and it’s wonderful when your audience finds you on Facebook, through a mobile search, or follows you on Instagram. You can get a lot of traffic that way. The only problem is that those options are incredibly distracting. There are fun videos to watch, other people’s photos to check out, and of course lots of different search results to click on.
How would you like to get, and keep, your audience’s undivided attention instead? That would be amazing to show off your products, share your expertise, and build a relationship with your potential customers, clients, and subscribers.
The answer is having your own mobile app for your online or brick and mortar business. It’s a great place where you have their undivided attention and can direct them to all your best stuff and offers.
Apps are big business, and just about any large business or brand has an app out there. You’re probably using quite a few of them yourself right now. You can order pizza via an app, get exclusive coupons for your favorite store, or walk around a place like Target scanning and matching special offers and coupons – looking a lot like your child playing Pokémon Go. Yes, big businesses have some cool apps, but that doesn’t mean they are the only ones who can benefit from them. With a little creative thinking, any business with an online presence can benefit from an app. Come to think of it, you don’t even have to have a website. If you have a local coffee shop or ice cream place, you could have an app with a loyalty rewards program built in, like the punch cards or stamps you may be using right now to reward loyal customers.
The point is that mobile apps are another marketing channel that you can add to your repertoire. It’s yet another way for you to get in front of your target audience, the people you’re trying to get on your list and eventually purchase your products. Or it can be a method to bring them back again and again.
Take pizza apps for example…
If there’s a push notification on my phone about a deal on my favorite pie right around the time, I’m starting to think about cooking dinner, I might just click through to the app and order. You can do something similar with your very own app. Send them a coupon a few days before their birthday, offer a loyalty rewards program through your app as discussed earlier, or take advantage of current trends. Share pictures of your favorite orange colored products in early fall, or offer special gift sets for purchase via your app before Christmas. Get creative and have fun with it.
Let’s go back to Pokémon Go for a second. Let’s say you’re a local business, and you could benefit from a little more foot traffic. Why not add a section in your app where you’ll let users know when you’ll drop a lure to attract more Pokémon to your store and the surrounding area. It’s a great way to boost foot traffic during downtimes.
Use the app as a tool that helps you build a closer relationship with your readers, users, and customers. Ask them for feedback, encourage them to share tips, and keep bringing them back to your site and your store through the app. Use the app as a tool to help them engage with you, your business, and your brand.
Add value with your app. The basic principle behind the app should always be to make it easier to find and use your products and services.
- If you have a restaurant or coffee shop, use a loyalty rewards program.
- If you have a small specialty store, offer an exclusive weekly coupon, like what big box craft stores are doing. It also allows you to put out a weekly flyer without the need of printing and mailing it to thousands of households.
- If you offer an online service, let customers log in via the mobile app and check on crucial data or content without having to log into the website.
Apps are also a great tool for communicating with your customers. A lot of people these days don’t like to call. They prefer to text, or communicate through an app.
- If you have a cleaning service, use the app to allow clients to book your services or get estimates.
- If you offer take-out, let customers order and pay via your app. Another great option for a restaurant would be to allow users to reserve a table without having to call.
Having your own app can help you stand out from the competition. This is particularly true if your main competitors aren’t in the app marketplace yet. Since there’s a bit of a tech hurdle to overcome when it comes to apps (I’ll show you how to easily overcome that next), chances are great that you’ll be the first among your competitors with an app. That can give you quite the edge, particularly with the younger crowd who loves doing anything and everything via an app.
Now let’s talk about how you can go about creating an app for your own business. The good news is that it’s a lot less expensive and complicated than you may think. Many people have the notion that it takes a team of programmers, fancy software, and thousands of dollars to develop an app. That’s simply not necessary – and that’s a good thing, because if it was, it would be out of the realm of possibility for most of us.
You have a couple of different options as far as getting a working app up and running. The first is to use one of several different app builders. Think of them as templates that you plug your own info in and upload to the app “store”. This is the easiest and least expensive option. It’s also the most “cookie cutter” and least flexible option. That being said, it’s a great way to get started and for some people this will do exactly what they need it to do.
A second, and in my opinion, the better option, is to hire someone to build it for you. You can find freelance coders to do this for you. It’s surprisingly inexpensive for a straight forward app. Prices will of course vary depending on what you want your app to do.
Let’s start there. The best way to get an idea of what functionality, look, and feel you want your app to have is to do a little research. Download some apps to your phone that look promising and play around with them. Note what you like and what you don’t like. Keep track of everything, so you can later show your programmer these apps and explain what you like and don’t like about each.
Once you have your list of things you want in your dream app, draw up a plan. Be as detailed as you can about what you want it to do, how you want it to work, and what you want it to look like. Include some sketches and / or photo mockups if you can. This will make communicating with a freelancer that much easier.
Post a project on your favorite freelance job boards like UpWork.com for example.
Or ask fellow online business owners for recommendations if some of your friends and associates have had apps developed already. If you don’t have good recommendations to work from, do your homework. Research each person bidding on your project. Look at the work they’ve done, ask for working examples of their app building, and references. Check out everything before making your decision, and don’t be afraid to listen to your gut. Explain the project in as much detail as possible. Work on open lines of communication to make sure your vision can be translated into a functional app that will do what it’s designed to do – bring you more business.
Once you’ve settled on your programmer, let him or her get to work. Don’t be surprised if you must make some compromises with your app. Some things may seem simple to you, but end up being too complicated on the backend. Roll with it and expect to go through several revisions before you end up with an app, you’re proud to put out there. Be open to feedback and suggestions from the coder. Who knows what cool stuff you can come up with between the two of you?
Once your app is ready, upload it to the app stores as applicable. This may depend on what your app was coded for. There are big differences in Apple and Android devices, for example. You can start by focusing on just one type of app, or have your programmer develop both at the same time.
Test your app and when it’s ready, launch it and start promoting it. Pay attention to the feedback you’re getting, both via emails and app store reviews. Promote it to your existing audience to get the ball rolling. From there, you should see it take on a life of its own (provided it’s a helpful app).
If you want to grow your app audience even faster, consider advertising it. Mobile advertising is ideal since it’s a mobile app. We’ll talk more about mobile advertising and how to get started in the next chapter.
Mobile Advertising
Now that your website is mobile ready, and you even have an app out there to promote your business and help you interact with your prospects and customers differently, it’s time to investigate mobile advertising.
While you certainly don’t need an app to make this work, please do make sure each aspect of your site is mobile ready before starting to spend money on advertising directly to people on their mobile devices.
We’ll start by going over a few different options for mobile ads and then wrap things up with some best practices. Read through the chapter in its entirety before you start playing with ads and giving this a try.
Mobile Advertising Networks
There are all sorts of mobile advertising networks out there. I’m going to introduce you to a few of them here. The key is to make the best use of your time and your resources. Start with the big ad networks, then as time allows, consider looking into some of the smaller, more niched ones that are a good fit for what you do and who you want to reach in your marketing.
By far the easiest and least expensive place to get started with mobile ads is Facebook. 60% of social media users mainly check in on their mobile phone. That means this is the perfect place to find your audience. And with Facebook’s extensive targeting feature, it is easy to hone in on exactly where on Facebook your ideal customers are hanging out.
Google Ads and AdMob
If you’re already familiar with Google Ads, it will be easy to set up a few ads that target mobile traffic directly. If not, as with Facebook, there are plenty of great resources out there to help walk you through the process step by step. Another interesting mobile ad network to try that’s part of the Google Family is AdMob. Google purchased the network that’s dedicated to mobile only. It is particularly helpful in promoting your mobile app.
Opera Media Works
Opera is another huge player in the mobile advertising market, with a reach of a reported 1.4 billion users. Sign up and give their mobile ad network a try to reach a portion of those users that fit your target market.
Unity Ads
Unity Ads is a mobile advertising network that puts an interesting spin on marketing. They focus on mobile ad gamers and allow you to follow a gamer across multiple app games in their network. If they fit your target audience, this would be an interesting network to test and try out.
There are of course quite a few other mobile advertising networks out there. If you’re short on time, focus on the big two or three, starting with Facebook. If that gets you where you want to be in terms of visibility, brand reach, and income, great. If not, take a look at some of the other networks out there. With that said, let’s move on to mobile advertising best practices.
Mobile Advertising Best Practices
Now that you’re familiar with some of the bigger mobile marketing networks and platforms out there, it’s time to create some ads and get comfortable with this new marketing funnel. Before you start to create your first ads and hand over your credit card, let’s go over some mobile advertising best practices.
Know Your Target Audience
Before you even consider running your first mobile ad (or any advertisement for that matter), you need to have a firm grasp on who your target audience is.
Who are your ideal customers?
Who are the people who will buy your stuff, use it daily and recommend it to others?
Those are the people you want to target in all your advertising efforts.
The more detailed you can be, the better. Make sure you know who they are, what they like, and where they hang out online.
To be a little more mobile specific, figure out what mobile devices they use (apple vs. android for example), what apps they use, what social media platforms they are active on via mobile, what games they play and what sites, forums, Facebook groups and the likes they frequent or are a part of.
The better you know your target audience, the easier it will become to create high converting ads and offers.
Start Small And Grow From There
It’s easy to get excited when you’ve created your first mobile ad. You want to blast it out there and then sit back and watch your business grow.
Here’s the hard truth.
There’s a good chance that your first few ads won’t convert all that well. If you’ve done your homework and come up with something that’s targeted well for your ideal audience, you may be lucky and break even.
If you don’t, don’t get discouraged.
It takes some tweaking to get the ad, the offer, the call to action, and target audience right.
Start small and don’t spend more than $5 per day. Play around with the ad until you come up with a winning combination.
Realize That Mobile Ads Are Different From Other Ads
If you’ve been running online ads for a while, you’ll have a leg up on anyone new to this type of advertising, but don’t assume that the ads you’re running already will work just as well on mobile.
Mobile Advertisements are different.
They are viewed on a very different screen, and your end user is in a different frame of mind when he’s on his smartphone than when he’s sitting at his laptop at work, for example. Keep that in mind as you research mobile ads and get started with this marketing medium.
Research Each Platform And Figure Out What Works
Not only is mobile advertising in general different from other ways to run online ads, but each platform is also different. They attract different audiences, display differently, and the final ads are shown in different places. An in-game ad for example is very different from a mobile Facebook ad.
Take your time and research each platform before you start to invest in advertising there.
Yes, your existing ads will be a good starting point.
Compare them to what others are doing on that platform, tweak as needed, and give it a try with a small budget.
Test and tweak as needed until you figure out what works (and what doesn’t).
Spy On Your Competition
I’ve hinted at this sneaky, but oh so powerful technique a few times throughout this report. It’s my favorite way to shortcut my way to winning ads. Simply look at what others are doing and come up with a similar ad that works for your business, your brand, and your products.
This strategy works best if you can spy on close competitors. If you’re selling an online course on publishing kindle books, look at others with similar training courses and the mobile advertising they are doing.
If you have a local bakery and are using mobile ads to get more customers in your store, look at what other small bakeries are doing online. Don’t limit yourself to your direct competitors. Instead, find bakeries across the country that are innovative in their online advertising campaigns.
Once you find your competition and start spying on them, pay attention to what platforms they advertise on.
What do the ads look like and where exactly do they appear?
Click through and study the offer and landing pages. Learn what you can and start to emulate. That’s how you’ll get good fast.
Test And Tweak Then Start Spending More Once You Know What Works
Finally, it’s important to test and track everything. The beauty of mobile advertising, and online advertising in general, is that it is easy to track everything. You can make small changes and see how they impact overall performance, cost, and conversions. Keep a close eye on your return on investment and you’ll do well.
Keep testing and tweaking until you find ads that work well for you. Then it’s simply a matter of opening the faucet, increasing your mobile advertising budget, and watching your business grow.
Conclusion
There you have it, evergreen mobile marketing explained in under 25 pages. Throughout this guide, we covered quite a bit of stuff. Let’s quickly recap. We started out talking briefly about why it is important to get into mobile marketing.
The numbers don’t lie and if the stats are any indication, mobile is only going to be more important as time goes by. Did you realize that some underdeveloped countries are skipping over things like landline phones and desktop computers and going straight to mobile?
That’s a pretty amazing development and only illustrates how many mobile devices and the information and products we access through them is becoming an integral part of our lives.
Next, we looked at what it takes to make sure each part of our online business is ready for mobile devices. We even covered what it takes to build your own mobile app and how to get started with that process. In the last chapter, I walked you through some of the mobile advertising networks out there and wrapped it all up with some mobile advertising best practices that I hope you’ll take to heart.
Let’s wrap this mobile marketing guide with my top 10 Mobile Marketing Tips that you should stick with at all times. Here we go:
- Know Your Target Audience And What They Use Their Mobile Devices For.
- Make Sure Every Part Of Your Sales Funnel Is Completely Mobile Friendly.
- Start Small and Test Until You Have A Well Performing Ad.
- Turn Up The Faucet and Keep Tweaking To Get The Biggest ROI.
- Create Ads and Content That’s Short And To The Point For Mobile Users.
- Consider Creating An App To Make Your Content and Products Easier To Consume On Mobile.
- Use Mobile Marketing As Another Channel That Allows You To Communicate With Your Target Audience.
- Spy On Your Competition To Come Up With New Ad And Marketing Ideas.
- Research Each New Mobile Marketing Platform and Figure Out What Works and What Doesn’t.
- Keep testing, Keep Changing, And Keep Improving Your Mobile Marketing.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this mobile marketing guide and have found it both helpful and inspiring.
Please, as with all things in life, remember that you have to take action to make something happen!
Don’t let yourself slip into overwhelm or over analysis. Make a list of what you want to accomplish (mobile app, mobile web, mobile ads, etc.) and force yourself to check out at least one item on that list every single day.
It won’t take too long before you’ve reached your goal.
