Small business owners have a multitude of responsibilities, including product creation and team development, but one of their top priorities is establishing an effective marketing strategy. Mobile marketing is considered to be one such strategy, which can have positive results for all businesses. However, it is particularly advantageous for small businesses.
Continue reading to discover the reasons why mobile marketing is advantageous for small businesses and how to maximize the benefits of this effective marketing approach.
Mobile Marketing
Before we delve into the intricacies of this approach, let’s start by establishing a functional definition for mobile marketing.
Mobile marketing, fundamentally, entails designing marketing strategies specifically for mobile devices. Such strategies may consist of text message (SMS) marketing as well as mobile-friendly email campaigns and others.
Traditional marketing methods such as newspaper, TV, and radio advertisements are aimed at a wide audience, whereas mobile marketing enables specific, customized interactions with customers.
SMS and email marketing are both exclusively sent to individuals who have expressed their interest in receiving communication from your company. These individuals are already actively involved with your business and have the highest probability of converting.
Why is mobile marketing important for a small business?
A strong mobile marketing strategy is beneficial for small businesses for several reasons. It is cost-effective and enhances audience targeting by focusing on the local customer base.
Create strong marketing campaigns on a budget
Mobile marketing is recommended for small businesses because it enables the creation of creative, enticing, and effective marketing campaigns on a budget when targeting a mobile audience.
If your company chooses to pay for traditional advertisements, such as TV commercials, it can result in significant expenses. This is without even taking into account the initial cost of creating the materials. Developing an impactful TV commercial necessitates scriptwriting, videographers, and potentially even costume designers.
In contrast, sending a text message or email is a low-cost option. Additionally, your in-house marketing team can handle the creation and delivery of emails or text messages to your customers.
Reach your target audience with ease
When considering marketing strategies, it is important to follow a key principle: target a location where your audience already frequents. Considering that approximately 80% of the global population owns a smartphone, utilizing mobile marketing is a wise decision in order to effectively reach nearly any target audience your business aims to engage with.
According to current research, it is estimated that 72% of internet users will rely solely on mobile devices to access the internet by 2025. By familiarizing yourself with mobile marketing for small businesses at present, you not only enhance the accessibility for your target audience but also position your business for future prosperity.
Improve location-based marketing
By taking steps to optimize your website for mobile users and local traffic, such as creating a Google Business Profile, you can improve your chances of appearing in local search results. This will result in an increase in local organic traffic and improve the visibility of your business to your target audience when they require your products or services.
Benefits of mobile marketing for small businesses
Mobile marketing is the most rapidly expanding type of advertising presently. It provides business owners with a convenient way to connect with and engage their intended audience. However, despite its widespread use and popularity, a large number of individuals are unaware of its numerous benefits and advantages compared to traditional marketing tactics. Presented below are some of the advantages provided by mobile marketing.
1. Deliver timely messages
Mobile marketing offers immediacy as a significant advantage. Since individuals typically have their mobile phones with them throughout the day, they can receive and promptly access your message. Even if the mobile phone is switched off, the message will be received and viewed promptly upon turning the phone back on. Additionally, mobile marketing helps establish a personal connection.
Mobile marketing involves sending marketing messages directly to customers’ phones, establishing a personal connection with the recipient. The key advantage of mobile marketing lies in the personal touch it adds to advertising, making it distinct from billboards, TV commercials, or print ads. By sending an advertising message to an individual’s personal phone, it effectively captures the attention of the intended audience. Mobile marketing can also be seen as an opt-in form of marketing.
In contrast to direct mail or email, which allows business owners to buy mailing lists, customers need to show their willingness or interest in receiving mobile ads and offers by giving their phone number. This ensures that you will be sending your advertising messages to individuals who have expressed a desire for them, leading to decreased wastage and improved conversion rates.
4. Movement capability or ability to move around.
Your marketing message can reach your target audience without them being restricted to a computer, television, or radio. Customers can receive your ads and offers on their mobile device at any time, even while they are on the move. Additionally, there are applications available that can automatically generate an offer when a customer is in close proximity to your business.
Many surveys indicate that mobile marketing campaigns using text messaging have a greater consumer response rate. Text messages have an open and read rate of over 90 percent. Utilizing mobile marketing enables small businesses to quickly reach a larger audience.
Within one hour, up to 83% of customers read the text messages they receive. Additionally, the personal approach implemented in mobile ads aids in boosting customer response and sales conversion rates. Take into account that the average response rates to mobile ads stand at 15%, while direct mail typically averages at a response rate of about 2.6%.
6. Within an affordable price range.
Tracking the success of a mobile marketing campaign is simple and convenient.
Mobile advertising enables immediate tracking of customer response, unlike conventional marketing methods. Unlike traditional marketing, mobile advertising facilitates interactive communication between marketers and customers. The individualized communication on mobile devices allows marketers to identify and profile potential customers more accurately.
The potential for going viral is a result of utilizing mobile marketing, as small businesses can track delivery rate, response rate, and sales conversion. Being able to track and evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing campaign is crucial, particularly for small businesses who need to carefully monitor their advertising budget.
Mobile marketing can be effortlessly shared and forwarded among friends and family, as users who receive valuable information or special offers on their mobile devices are often enthusiastic about distributing these messages among their peers.
If mobile users share or forward mobile marketing to others, marketers benefit from increased exposure without any extra cost or effort. Mobile marketing campaigns have the capability to transition into viral marketing.
The top mobile marketing strategies for small businesses
It may require some effort to grasp how to incorporate mobile marketing for small businesses. There are several choices to make mobile marketing effective for your brand. Now, we shall examine a few prominent mobile marketing strategies, along with some examples, to understand how they can benefit your small business.
Improve all marketing with mobile users in mind
First of all, start by optimizing your online presence with a focus on mobile users. Familiarize yourself with the distinction between mobile-friendly and mobile-responsive website design. After that, transition to a mobile-responsive website or create a mobile app specifically for your mobile users, rather than using a website.
To enhance mobile-friendliness, you can choose shorter lines of text. By incorporating headings and subheadings in written material or employing GIFs in emails, mobile users can easily skim through your content instead of feeling overwhelmed by long paragraphs.
One way to make social media content more targeted towards mobile users is by focusing each post on one core message with one targeted call to action (CTA).
If you want mobile users to notice your social media posts, it is important to make them eye-catching and scannable and include a clear call to action because these users tend to scroll quickly through information. Otherwise, they are likely to continue scrolling without paying attention.
Implement voice search optimization
A large number of mobile users opt for voice-to-text features when conducting searches. As an instance, Apple users may inquire, “Hey, Siri, which plumbers are in close proximity?”
Voice search optimization allows voice recognition software to more easily locate your business when searching for answers to specific queries. Similar to how mobile optimization differs from search engine optimization, voice search optimization requires its own set of recommended strategies that you should familiarize yourself with.
Voice search optimization differs from traditional keyword optimization because it emphasizes the use of long-tail keywords. While users may input only a few words when conducting a Google search, such as “SEO best practices,” their speech tends to encompass longer phrases and sentences. Thus, the query “SEO best practices” transforms into “How can I enhance the SEO of my website?”
As voice search becomes increasingly popular, there is a noticeable increase in the use of questions in search engines. The number of searches containing question words such as “who” or “how” has consistently risen by 61% each year. To optimize for voice search, it is essential to target these specific long-tail keywords, considering how people search using voice-to-text technology.
To achieve this, consider augmenting the number of FAQs featured on your website. Additionally, you may tailor FAQs towards distinct products or categories available on your website.
To further enhance voice searches, you can adopt a less formal tone in your content, aiming for a conversational style. This is because search queries typically don’t include terms like “utilize.” Utilize tools like Grammarly or the Hemmingway Editor to ensure that your content is both easy to understand and maintains the appropriate tone.
More than half (52.8%) of individuals who utilize voice search engage in this activity while operating a vehicle. Generally, these searches are focused on fulfilling a specific, local requirement. By ensuring the visibility of your business for such local inquiries, it is possible to enhance the amount of organic local traffic generated through voice searches.
Run strong text message marketing campaigns
When you hear the term “mobile marketing,” one of the first things that may come to mind is text message marketing, and for a good reason. It is worth noting that almost 80% of text messages are read and opened within 15 minutes of being sent, making it a faster and more dependable marketing channel compared to others.
Before embarking on a text message marketing campaign, it is essential to familiarize yourself with the best practices of SMS marketing. Additionally, conducting online research on mobile marketing examples can offer insights into how other businesses have successfully employed these best practices.
Before using text message marketing, it is important to understand how to utilize it effectively. Once you have a thorough understanding, establish objectives for your future text message marketing campaign. For instance, do you intend to advertise a particular sale or boost the number of subscribers to your email list?
SMART goals, which are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-constrained, can aid in measuring accomplishments and recognizing challenges, leading to incremental enhancements in your text message marketing techniques.
