Marketing for Mobile: Tactics & Barriers to Entry

Mobile Marketing Tactics & Barriers to Entry

This is the second in a series of posts from a presentation I am currently giving to advertising & marketing organizations. Contact us if you’d like us to speak to your organization or group.

In my last post on Mobile Marketing, I discussed why you need to and how to get started. In this post, we’ll introduce a few tactics and their barriers to entry. Then I’ll discuss the lowest barrier to entry, Social Media and Email Marketing.

Barriers to Entry Chart.

From lowest to highest, here are some Mobile Marketing tactics. I’ll be discussing the first in this post.

• Social Networks and Email Marketing
• Mobile Advertising
• Mobile Search Results
• Mobile Optimized Websites & Landing Pages
• Mobile Applications

The biggest takeaway here is that you don’t need a massive budget to get started. Remember Mobile Marketing is Social, Local, Mobile. If you don’t have the money or skills to build a mobile app, guess what? You can get started immediately anyway. Here’s how.

Lowest barrier to entry: Social Networks & Email Marketing

This is the low hanging fruit. It’s always prudent to go where your audience is going. Recent studies have estimated that before we get out of bed, 24% of smartphone users check their email and 18% check their Facebook account. That’s HUGE! You should be engaging your audience where they are on their mobile phones first.

Here are some concepts to get used to with Social and Email:

Go where the people go: Ridiculous amounts of people are addicted to social media right now. They are engaging not only with their friends and family, but with companies and brands. There are new and innovative ways for any ethical company to have conversations with their audience, which leads to the next concept.

Brand Journalism: There’s a saying now in our industry that “Content is the new Advertising“. It’s true. People connect to stories. People connect to other people. If you are not telling a story that connects to people, you are losing an opportunity.

Brand Ambassadors: The companies that I most believe in are companies that I will mention in my networks and go to bat for any day. Create incentives for your “fans” to help tell your story. Word of mouth will always be the most effective marketing.

Don’t be a fake: Committing to what’s being called “social media” implies that you are creating a dialog between your brand and your audience. The internet audience is skeptical and savvy now. They’ll call out a fake in a heartbeat. If you’re in, go all the way. Respond to comments. Retweet and reply. “Like” your customers just as much as they like you. Gary Vaynerchuk said it best when he said that “Saying thank you is the next killer business strategy.” But if you don’t mean it, it doesn’t count, and may even do you harm.

Email Marketing

At this point in time, email marketing can be considered mobile marketing. All smartphone users are checking email on their phones now. The fact that a lot of us are checking before we get out of bed hints at the times that you should be sending your email campaigns. If you audience is paying attention and less likely to be annoyed while they’re checking their email in the morning, time your emails for that time. A tertiary win is that users are less likely to unsubscribe from an email list through their mobile phone.

Some other email marketing tips:

• Design your email template with mobile in mind. A 600 pixel header won’t look good on mobile.
• Create your callouts with mobile phones in mind. Links should be nice and big, and the email should be easy to scan. Get right to the point and encourage a call to action.

I hope this series helps your efforts. My next post will discuss Mobile Advertising, so look out for it soon!

~jason