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Does the statement ‘reach your customers where they are’ right a bell? If yes, you are probably not averse to know that in the digital age, a successful brand is one that can reach customers on the platform of their choice. Gone are the days when consumers came to the brand; the 21st century is all about the customer!

Why is Mobile Marketing important?

Mobile marketing is not a new hit, but something that several brands have recognized since years. Smartphones have evolved and keep evolving, allowing mobile users to do a lot more than just calling and texting.

According to Quoracreative, the number of smartphone users is projected to reach 2.87 billion by 2020, and 62% of users access the internet using their mobile phones. As a matter of fact, the number of mobile users has surpassed desktop users by a considerable margin, way back in 2015!

Some of the critical reasons why enterprises should consider mobile marketing for enhancing their business strategy are:

1. Increased reach: Mobile marketing generally gets higher reach since 50% of smartphone owners check their devices first thing in the morning, and spend more than 4 hours a day on their phone.
2. Ideal for making purchase decisions: A whopping 82% of customers use their smartphones for making purchase decisions, and 46% read online reviews before making a purchase on their smartphones. Brands that optimize their platforms for mobile user experience also show improvement by 61% and have resulted in $1 trillion mobile-influenced offline spends. This makes it essential even for businesses that do not have an online store.
3. Efficient yet cost-effective: Given the high engagement and reach, the ROI for a brand on mobile marketing is significantly high compared to other marketing channels. Not only is it useful in terms of marketing outreach, but mobile marketing and optimization can also fit into your overall marketing strategy, without taking a massive cut from your budget.

What is Mobile Marketing?

Mobile marketing if explained simply is an approach that is taken by a brand or individual to reach out to their target customers and communicate with them through their mobile devices. It covers a multi-channel, digital marketing approach that includes every channel that can enable this goal. Some of the top mobile marketing channels are:

https://quoracreative.com/article/mobile-marketing-statistics

https://quoracreative.com/article/mobile-marketing-statistics

• Apps: While mobile marketing can cover various channels, having a mobile app makes a lot of sense, especially for brands that are in the B2C business. The time spent on apps has grown by 63% times and is perfect for building brand loyalty, for 85% of users prefer to use an app instead of the mobile-optimized website.
• Website: Your website is a great place to interact with your customers, but it may not appear in most search results if it has not been optimized for mobiles. Google now ranks websites that are optimized, responsive and easy to use in mobile devices higher than a website that doesn’t. Also, 9 out of 10 users are lost if your website is not mobile-friendly and has a load time of more than 5 seconds.
• Social Media: While apps, websites and other channels are great to get the user to you, social media is a great option to go where the user is. The global social media users are estimated to be 72.4% of the world’s online population, and 55% of this social media engagement happens on a mobile device.
• Emails: Every business uses email marketing for their customer outreach, but do you know the audience engagement may be higher on the mobile that a PC? 57% of emails are opened on smartphones, and 69% of users delete emails that are not optimized for their phone.
• Chat / SMS Marketing: SMS and MMS are a powerful channel for communication, and are 8x more effective at customer engagement compared to other channels. Additionally, WhatsApp has over 1.6 billion active users monthly active users, and 52% young users use at least one messaging app, making it important especially for brands that are targeting the millennial / Gen Z audience.
• Search: Mobile searches are popular, and 80% of users used their mobile device to search the internet for something in 2019. This showcase the benefits for brands that have their SEO and website optimized for mobile use.

How to achieve a mobile marketing mindset for your brand?

As you’d have realized by now, a mobile-marketing mindset is not just a stand-alone activity, but something that needs to be ingrained into each marketing channel and campaigns to be highly effective. Mobile marketing can also help you generate greater results for your marketing channels. So, it is crucial to invest and optimize your website, emails, social media and other channels for smartphone users.

Understand your target audience: Mobile marketing will be effective only if you know which customer to reach out to. Define your target persona by looking into the background, location, goals, challenges and other information that you would like to target to get more optimized results.

Choose the channels that make sense: While most brands try to leverage every channel, it is wise to know which ones are the best fit for you. E.g. while having a mobile app can be useful for online businesses, for those that rely on face to face interaction, it may not yield the right results. Focus your attention on the channels that make sense and spread as you move along.

Establish the KPI (Key Performance Indicator): The best way to understand whether your mobile marketing mindset is productive is by calculating its value. Brainstorm on what your brand would like to achieve through this medium and start tracking the metric accordingly. This could be leads, conversions, actual sales or something else that makes business sense. 

Keep improving & optimizing: Like any other marketing strategy, mobile marketing is all about being relevant and reinventing yourself every now and then. Keep enhancing so you keep getting good results and may even do better!

So, are you ready to achieve a mobile-marketing mindset? What are your views on the mobile marketing approach and will you be incorporating it in your marketing approach? Let us know in the comments below!