You haven’t had your head stuck in the sand in recent years, so you already know that mobile internet technology is permanently changing the way consumers do business.
If you want to keep up with the direction of your target customer base, then you need to adapt to this shift toward mobile sooner rather than later. Below are five key actions you can take to join the mobile revolution and take your sales to the next level.
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1) Use Mobile-Specific Keywords in Your Blog Content
Voice search is changing the game in terms of keyword research and keyword-focused blog and ad content. The reason is that people use different nuances of speech when talking versus writing.
So for example, a customer using her laptop might type in “best sushi restaurant Las Vegas,” while that same person using Siri on her iPhone might simply say, “what’s the best sushi restaurant in Vegas”. See the difference? If you want to target mobile users, your keyword research and usage need to evolve.
2) Create an App for Your Business
Mobile apps offer a huge opportunity for marketers, because consumers of all demographics are spending more time on mobile devices. And most smartphone users lean toward specific apps and spend most of their online time in these apps. Depending on your business model, the types of apps that would work well for you might be obvious or not.
If you need help coming up with app ideas that would fit your brand, contact a trusted app developer company to discuss the matter. But developing your app is just the first step. You’ll also need to learn about app store optimization for both the Apple and Android marketplaces in order to increase visibility for your app once you release it.
3) Test Out Text Message Marketing
SMS and text marketing is still a growing strategy for marketing to consumers on mobile devices. As more of your customer base shifts away from landlines and dumb phones over to smart devices, you’ll want to finally take the plunge and test out the waters of text message marketing.
Open rates for these marketing messages are often much higher than those for email, but that isn’t likely to last forever as more people get used to these messages coming in through their phones. So take advantage of this methodology before the window of opportunity shrinks.
4) Invest in Proper Mobile Site Design
“Mobile first” is the direction that internet marketing is heading. By now you probably have incorporated responsive design into your website’s architecture. If you haven’t yet done that, then now is the time to make your company website mobile-friendly.
But since the whole world is going mobile at an increasing pace, to stay ahead of the curve you will need to begin designing your site layouts and content with mobile users in mind. This means writing text in one- and two-sentence paragraphs, using less horizontal images and more vertical ones and including more multimedia content that is easily adaptable for playing in apps used by mobile devices.
5) Commit to Consistent Social Media Marketing
It’s been said a million times before, but it bears repeating: to increase online sales, you have to go to where your customers are. If your customers are spending 16 percent or more of their internet time on Facebook, then you need to be on Facebook. You cannot continue putting it off just because you don’t understand Facebook — or whichever social media platform we’re talking about here.
You either need to figure out how to use these platforms, or you need to hire somebody who already understands them. Then you need to commit to daily updates and interactions on a consistent, ongoing basis. You can’t just keep dabbling here and dabbling there. Commit to the process and reap the rewards.
Diving headfirst into mobile marketing might seem like a scary decision. But the course is already set. You either jump in, or you get left behind. Putting these five mobile marketing strategies into action now will put you ahead of much of your competition and will drive sales for a long time to come.
