Take a look around. Everyone’s glued to their smartphones morning, noon, and night. That’s why most traffic to e-commerce stores now comes from mobile devices.
All the online usage and shopping stats tell you mobile is where e-commerce is going — and in fact, it’s already arrived.
From Zoom calls to social media, app notifications and touchless payments, we rely on smartphones more than ever before. That’s what makes effective mobile marketing as business-basic as light and electricity. In the age of m-commerce, campaigns designed for the mobile channel are an absolute necessity.
If your mobile marketing strategy isn’t smashing it, you’re probably falling behind. What does a great mobile marketing program look like? First, you need to understand the cornerstones of mobile marketing and why mastering them matters to your brand.
So, let’s start there.
What do we mean by mobile marketing?
Mobile marketing is an umbrella term that covers a range of tools, techniques, and technologies. What they all have in common is the channel they leverage and the audience they target: mobile shoppers.
Your mobile marketing strategy is the collection of tactics you use to engage all those prospective mobile customers. While we think of smartphones first when we hear the word ‘mobile’, marketing to mobile users is often multichannel, using push notifications from shopping apps, SMS, SEO, email, social media, and content marketing.
It’s the mobile-first nature of modern living that makes mobile marketing so crucial. People spend more than three hours every day on their iPhones and Androids. In marketing, it always makes sense to be where your target audience lives, works, commutes, or shops. Today that means engaging them through mobile channels.
Mobile marketing: the stats
Did you know that …
… the average person spends four hours a day on their smartphone
We now spend more time on our smartphones than we do watching televison. The average person spends 5-6 hours a day on average staring down into a handheld screen. That’s compared to 4 hours spent watching TV.
Voice shopping has arrived
‘Siri, find me a cool pair of trainers.’ If you haven’t already tried buying something using your smartphone’s virtual assistant, you need to keep up. By next year, voice shopping is expected to be worth USD 40 billion — a 1,900 per cent jump over 2018.
Mobile website use is in decline
The gap between mobile apps and mobile website sites is growing. Smartphone users are rapidly cutting back on the time they spend using mobile web browsers. They’re shifting to mobile apps instead.
Most mobile time is spent using apps
As the time we spend on mobile devices grows, around 84 per cent of it is spent in apps. Mobile users spend 4 hours a day using smartphone apps on average, a 30% rise from from two years ago. In some markets, the numbers go higher — exceeding five hours. Between 2019 and today, time spent in apps grew by 80%.
Why create a dedicated mobile marketing program?
If you don’t actively connect with consumers where they are, you’re going to get hammered by the competition. Mobile is the online space people occupy most frequently, but that’s not the only reason to fine-tune your mobile marketing strategy. For example …
Low barriers to entry
Unlike other online marketing tactics like AdWords and SEO, many mobile strategies are easy and cost-effective to switch on. Whether you try push message marketing or an app store optimization campaign, you don’t need big budgets or technical nous. With a bit of research, planning, and buy-in from sales and senior management, you’re off and running.
Connecting in real-time
Mobile is a right-now medium, so if you reach out to a mobile user, there’s a good chance you’ll connect with them ‘live’ while they’re using the device. Think about what that could mean for conversion and time to ROI? Everything you do in mobile marketing is comparable to a point of sale promotion at the mall. You’re reaching people when they’re just steps away from making a purchase.
Location-aware technology
Most people take their smartphones wherever they go. That means you can deliver offers and content triggered by the user’s geographic location, for example, if they’re nearby one of your physical locations. Burger King infamously did this a few years ago, targeting mobile users in the vicinity of rival restaurants to encourage people to try a Whopper instead.
Where to begin with mobile marketing
Before putting time, resource, and budget into a mobile marketing program, it’s essential to know what customers like and don’t like about your current mobile presence. Look at your web analytics to understand which pages users visit more often, where the traffic came from, and the points where people lost interest.
You might even try ethnographic research – many brands do. Put a selection of customers from different demographics in a room and observe how they use your mobile website or app. Track how they bounce back and forth between product pages and category pages, for example, or see how much time is spent wandering about looking at what’s on offer.
Heatmaps are another great way to clarify how customers interact with your brand on mobile. Heatmaps can capture where clicks tend to accumulate (the ‘hotter’ a page element, the more clicks it’s received) and how far users will typically scroll down a page.
Mobile e-commerce marketing tactics
So how do you build a successful mobile e-commerce marketing plan? Let’s consider the primary tactics and how they can be used.
01 Go multichannel
The time when marketers focused their efforts around one online medium is over. As mobile devices become more and more personalized and the experience of using them more intimate, brands are seeing mobile as the glue between channels like push notifications, mobile adverts, and social media — the perfect unified medium to drive engagement and strengthen conversion.
02 Use push messages and notifications
More than 60% of mobile users say they like to see personalized content when they shop online, for example, suggesting products based on previous purchases.
They also like personalized communications. The open rate for push notifications is 60 per cent (for comparison, traditional email promotions get about 20 per cent). Even better, when a notification message is opened, 40 per cent of people click on the link.
03 Video content
Mobile users consume video content voraciously, which makes marketing videos highly effective at triggering the purchase impulse. More than 85% of millennials say they’ve bought something after seeing it in a marketing video. Embed YouTube videos, try adding short product demos, video tips, or unboxing videos that let users experience the thrill of a purchase vicariously.
04 Offer customers a mobile app
With a mobile e-commerce app, you can gather customer data to personalize content and messaging to their preferences. Customers will see product recommendations based on previous purchases, discounts to encourage cross-promotion, and messages tuned to their segment pr demographic profile. Those elements can reduce cart abandonment and boost conversion. Stats from Criteo show businesses with an e-commerce app typically see a 54 per cent rise in mobile revenue.
So there you have it
With e-commerce rapidly moving to mobile, having a targeted and effective mobile marketing strategy is an absolute must. You need to connect with shoppers where they live, and increasingly that means smartphones.
There are numerous mobile marketing approaches that can return outstanding results. From optimizing your website for smartphones to building a premium mobile shopping app, your options are almost limitless.
Here at JMango360, we’ve designed mobile marketing campaigns for over 1,000 brands.
If you’re considering how you can improve your mobile e-commerce marketing, why not schedule a free strategy call with our team?
Click here for more information: https://jmango360.com/strategy-call/.
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