Mobile marketing is no longer optional—it’s essential for small business success.
With everyone constantly connected to their smartphones and other mobile devices, you’re missing huge opportunities if you’re not reaching customers there.
This guide will show you how to leverage mobile marketing to achieve your business goals, expand your reach, and connect with your target audience more frequently, ultimately boosting sales and your bottom line.
Whether you’re new to mobile marketing or just need convincing, this guide is your perfect starting point.
The Mobile Imperative: Why You Can’t Afford to Wait
How often do you use your smartphone? It’s probably with you constantly, used for everything from web Browse to social media.
You’re part of a global shift: the world has gone mobile. No matter your target audience, a significant portion can be reached through mobile marketing.
Since 2014, mobile device usage has outpaced traditional computer use globally, a trend that’s only intensifying.
People are now spending, on average, three hours a day on their smartphones—a substantial amount of time spent online, on apps, and consuming video content.
And this isn’t just a niche group; over 80% of US mobile subscribers now own smartphones, and that number continues to grow.
This shift creates immense opportunities for your business, regardless of whether you operate online or have a brick-and-mortar presence.
Mobile searches frequently translate into physical store visits, as customers use their devices to find locations, check inventory, or research products before making a purchase.
The rise of shopping apps, even among smaller stores and older demographics, further underscores the importance of this channel.
The financial impact is undeniable: in 2015 alone, US online shopping via mobile devices generated $11.7 billion. That’s a piece of the market you simply can’t ignore.
If holidays drive your sales, remember that last year, one in five customers researched gifts on their smartphones. You need to be there when they’re looking.
Finally, for effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO), your website must be mobile-responsive.
If it’s not, you’re actively losing out on free traffic from Google—a costly oversight no business can afford.
Ensure Your Website is Mobile-Ready
Your mobile marketing success hinges on one crucial element: your website’s mobile responsiveness.
If your audience struggles to use your site on their favorite devices, all your efforts to attract them will fall flat.
Begin by personally testing your site. Grab your smartphone, tablet, and any other devices you have, and visit your website. Check it across various browsers.
Click around to ensure everything looks good, is easy to navigate, and functions perfectly.
Pay special attention to your email opt-in forms and, critically, your shopping cart. Enlist friends or family to test on their devices too for a wider range of feedback.
Beyond personal testing, leverage online tools. Google offers a valuable Mobile-Friendly Test (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/).
Simply input your website’s URL, and it will flag any issues Google identifies—issues that can impact your mobile search visibility.
Next look at the content you’re sending out in your emails. Do the emails themselves display well on a smart phone?
Are they easy to read and do the links work from those devices. If you’re sending out a weekly or monthly newsletter or flyer, have a look at that as well.
Is it easy to download if needed, and again, is it easy to consume from a mobile device like a phone or tablet. You may also want to take a look at file sizes.
This is particularly important when you include a lot of images and multi-media files.
You don’t want to have mobile subscribers unsubscribe because your email content eats up a big chunk of their data plan.
Once you’ve checked everything out yourself, consider polling your subscribers to learn more about how many of them access your messages via mobile devices and how well that is working for them.
Your auto-responder service data is another great place to get some of this information.
In the reporting section of your dashboard you should have some good data on how many subscribers are mainly on mobile.
Compare this date with unsubscribes to see at a glance if a large portion of your mobile subscribers unsubscribe after a few days or weeks.
If so, you may have some issues that you should address before driving more mobile traffic.
Since we’re talking about data, let me tell you about another great place to find mobile usage information. It’s your website stats.
If you have Google Analytics or a similar program installed, you should be able to pull some really good data on mobile usage, mobile search and the likes. In particular you want to look at things like:
Page Views
The first thing you want to do is take a look your page views and then look at how many of them are viewed via mobile devices.
Chances are you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how many people are accessing your site through their mobile devices already.
This is particularly true if your site is already mobile ready.
Looking at this data alone will show you just how much of your audience is accessing your site through their smartphones and tablets.
If you don’t see at least 30% of your traffic coming from mobile devices, you may have an issue that you should look into right away.
Go back and recheck that your website is mobile ready. Make changes as needed, give it a few weeks and keep an eye on your mobile page views.
You should start to see some increases that are unrelated to any mobile advertising you do.
Looking into individual pages that get a lot of mobile views can also be very telling. Try to put yourself into your audience’s mind.
Is there a reason this particular page is popular for someone on their mobile device?
If you’re getting a lot of search engine traffic particularly from mobile devices, is there something that makes these pages different from the rest of the ones on your site?
Maybe you don’t include a particular ad, widget, or plugin on those pages that makes it more mobile friendly. This is important information to have.
Last but not least, look at where the traffic is coming from if it isn’t search. Do they come through a particular social network, or a link from a different site or forum.
If so, these may be good sites and networks to engage on, particularly to reach your mobile audience.
Bounce Rate
Something else worth looking at is the bounce rate. Any good website stats program should give you this data. Again, my personal favorite is Google Analytics.
It’s free and it gives you all sorts of insightful data. In this case we want to look at the bounce rate of people accessing your site via a mobile device.
But what exactly is a bounce rate? Here’s a good definition for you:
“Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.”
Pretty straight forward right? In almost all cases you want visitors to spend time on your site and browse around.
If they leave right away, it’s a sure sign that either your content isn’t of interest to them, or the page isn’t displaying properly.
Look at your bounce rate for mobile and compare it to the rate for people accessing your site via desktop and laptop computer.
If your bounce rate for mobile is much higher than your regular bounce right, there’s something going on with your site that makes it less attractive to mobile users.
Investigate, figure out what it is and fix it. You know you’ve nailed it when your bounce rate stays about the same no matter what device your site is viewed from.
Sales Conversion
Let’s dig back into the website analytics data one more time. The last figure you want to take a closer look at is sales conversion.
Depending on how you have tracking set up, this could be in your Google Analytics account, in your shopping cart software, or in the dashboard for a third party tracking service.
Looking at conversion rates and comparing your regular sales conversion to that of sales made from mobile devices only, can tell you a lot of things.
It can tell you how easy it is to order from a smartphone or other mobile device.
It can also tell you if your target audience is interested in buying products form their devices.
If for example, you know that your sales pages and shopping cart work well on mobile, and you’re still not seeing a lot of sales, this may mean that your target audience isn’t comfortable making those purchases on their phone.
It could be the price point, it could be the age or another demographical aspect of your ideal customer.
The important part is that you now know that they won’t buy directly from their smart phone. That’s important information to have.
In this particular case you don’t want to spend a lot of money on mobile advertisements designed to entice people to buy your products.
Instead, your mobile marketing efforts and cash may be better spent on getting them on your list so you can email them and get them to visit your online store from their laptop where you know the sales will convert.
Now that you have a good idea of what to look for when it comes to mobile optimization and data, it’s time to dig in and make a plan of action.
Figure out what you need to change, get to work, or hire someone to do the work for you.
Dig through your data and make same smart marketing decisions based on the information you find there.
In other words, get all aspects of your website mobile ready and learn as much as you can about how your particular target audience feels about mobile devices.
Then get ready for the next fun mobile marketing project – mobile apps.
Mobile App Development: Capture Undivided Attention
While social media and mobile search are great for driving traffic, they’re also full of distractions.
Wouldn’t it be better to have your audience’s complete focus to showcase your products, share your expertise, and build strong relationships?
The solution lies in having your own mobile app.
An app provides a dedicated space where you have your audience’s undivided attention, allowing you to direct them to your best content and offers without competition.
Apps are no longer just for big brands. You likely use several yourself for everything from ordering food to finding exclusive deals.
And while major corporations have sophisticated apps, the benefits of a mobile app extend to virtually any business with an online presence, or even a local shop.
Imagine a coffee shop offering a digital loyalty program through its own app, replacing traditional punch cards.
With a little creativity, your business can leverage the power of mobile apps to engage customers and drive growth, even without a website.
The point is that mobile apps are another marketing channel that you can add to your repertoire.
It’s yet another way for you to get in front of your target audience, the people you’re trying to get on your list and convince to buy your products.
Or it can be a method to bring them back again and again. Take pizza apps for example.
If there’s a push notification on my phone about a deal on my favorite pie right around the time I’m starting to think about cooking dinner, I might just click though to the app and order.
You can do something similar with your very own app.
Send them a coupon a few days before their birthday, offer a loyalty rewards program through your app as discussed earlier, or take advantage of current trends.
Share pictures of your favorite orange colored products in early fall, or offer special gift sets for purchase via your app before Christmas.
Get creative and have fun with it.
Let’s go back to Pokemon Go for a second. Let’s say you’re a local business and you could benefit from a little more foot traffic.
Why not add a section in your app where you’ll let users know when you’ll drop a lure to attract more Pokemon to your store and the surrounding area.
It’s a great way to boost foot traffic during down times. Use the app as a tool that helps you build a closer relationship with your readers, users, and customers.
Ask them for feedback, encourage them to share tips, and keep bringing them back to your site and your store through the app.
Use the app as a tool to help them engage with you, your business, and your brand.
Add value with your app. The basic principle behind the app should always be to make it easier to find and use your products and services.
• If you have a restaurant or coffee shop, use a loyalty rewards program.
• If you have a small specialty store, offer an exclusive weekly coupon similar to what big box craft stores are doing. It also allows you to put out a weekly flyer without the need of printing and mailing it to thousands of households.
• If you offer an online service, let customers log in via the mobile app and check on crucial data or content without having to log into the website. Apps are also a great tool for communicating with your customers. A lot of people these days don’t like to call. They prefer to text, or communicate through an app.
• If you have a cleaning service, use the app to allow clients to book your services or get estimates.
• If you offer take-out, let customers order and pay via your app. Another great option for a restaurant would be to allow users to reserve a table without having to call.
Having your own app can help you stand out from the competition. This is particularly true if your main competitors aren’t in the app market place yet.
Since there’s a bit of a tech hurdle to overcome when it comes to apps (I’ll show you how to easily overcome that next), chances are great that you’ll be the first among your competitors with an app.
That can give you quite the edge, particularly with the younger crowd who loves doing anything and everything via an app.
Now let’s talk about how you can go about creating an app for your own business. The good news is that it’s a lot less expensive and complicated than you may think.
Many people have the notion that it takes a team of programmers, fancy software, and thousands of dollars to develop an app.
That’s simply not necessary – and that’s a good thing, because if it was, it would be out of the realm of possibility for most of us.
You have a couple of different options as far as getting a working app up and running. The first is to use one of several different app builders.
Think of them as templates that you plug your own info in and upload to the app “store”.
This is the easiest and least expensive option. It’s also the most “cookie cutter” and least flexible option.
That being said, it’s a great way to get started and for some people this will do exactly what they need it to do.
Here is a great review of several good app builders: http://www.websitetooltester.com/en/blog/app-makers/
A second, and in my opinion, the better option, is to hire someone to build it for you. You can find freelance coders to do this for you.
It’s surprisingly inexpensive for a straight forward app. Prices will of course vary depending on what you want your app to do.
Let’s start there. The best way to get an idea of what functionality, look, and feel you want your app to have is to do a little research.
Download some apps to your phone that look promising and play around with them. Note what you like and what you don’t like.
Keep track of everything so you can later show your programmer these apps and explain what you like and don’t like about each.
Once you have your list of things you want in your dream app, draw up a plan.
Be as detailed as you can about what you want it to do, how you want it to work, and what you want it to look like.
Include some sketches and / or photo mockups if you can. This will make communicating with a freelancer that much easier.
Once you’ve settled on your programmer, let him or her get to work. Don’t be surprised if you have to make some compromises with your app.
Some things may seem simple to you, but actually end up being too complicated on the backend.
Roll with it and expect to go through several revisions before you end up with an app you’re proud to put out there.
Be open to feedback and suggestions from the coder. Who knows what cool stuff you can come up with between the two of you?
Once your app is ready, upload it to the app stores as applicable. This may depend on what your app was coded for.
There are big differences in Apple and Android devices for example.
You can start by focusing on just one type of app, or have your programmer develop both of them at the same time.
Test your app and when it’s ready, launch it and start promoting it. Pay attention to the feedback you’re getting both via emails and app store reviews.
Promote it to your existing audience to get the ball rolling. From there you should see it take on a life of its own (provided it’s a helpful app).
If you want to grow your app audience even faster consider advertising it. Mobile advertising is ideal since it’s a mobile app.
We’ll talk more about mobile advertising and how to get started in the next chapter.
Mobile Advertising
Now that your website is mobile ready and you even have an app out there to promote your business and help you interact with your prospects and customers in a different way, it’s time to look into mobile advertising.
While you certainly don’t need an app to make this work, please do make sure each aspect of your site is mobile ready before starting to spend money on advertising directly to people on their mobile devices.
We’ll start by going over a few different options for mobile ads and then wrap things up with some best practices.
Read through the chapter in its entirety before you start playing with ads and giving this a try.
Mobile Advertising Networks
There are all sorts of mobile advertising networks out there. I’m going to introduce you to a few of them here.
The key is to make the best use of your time and your resources.
Start with the big ad networks, then as time allows, consider looking into some of the smaller, more niched ones that are a good fit for what you do and who you want to reach in your marketing.
By far the easiest and least expensive place to get started with mobile ads is Facebook. 60% of social media users mainly check in on their mobile phone.
That means this is the perfect place to find your audience.
And with Facebook’s extensive targeting feature, it is easy to hone in on exactly where on Facebook your ideal customers are hanging out.
Google Adwords and AdMob
If you’re already familiar with Google Adwords ads, it will be easy to set up a few ads that target mobile traffic directly.
If not, as with Facebook there are plenty of great resources out there to help walk you through the process step by step.
Another interesting mobile ad network to try that’s part of the Google Family is AdMob. Google purchased the network that’s dedicated to mobile only.
It is particularly helpful in promoting your mobile app.
Opera Media Works
Opera is another huge player in the mobile advertising market with a reach of a reported 1.4 billion users.
Sign up and give their mobile ad network a try to reach a portion of those users that fit your target market.
Unity Ads
Unity Ads is a mobile advertising network that puts an interesting spin on marketing.
They focus on mobile ad gamers and allow you to follow a gamer across multiple app games in their network.
If they fit your target audience, this would be an interesting network to test and try out.
There are of course quite a few other mobile advertising networks out there. If you’re short on time, focus on the big two or three, starting with Facebook.
If that gets you where you want to be reach and income wise, great. If not, take a look at some of the other networks out there.
With that said, let’s move on to mobile advertising best practices.
Mobile Advertising Best Practices
Now that you’re familiar with some of the bigger mobile marketing networks and platforms out there, it’s time to create some ads and get comfortable with this new marketing funnel.
Before you start to create your first ads and hand over your credit card, let’s go over some mobile advertising best practices.
Know Your Target Audience
Before you even consider running your first mobile ad (or any advertisement for that matter), you need to have a pretty firm grasp on who your target audience is.
Who are your ideal customers? Who are the people who will buy your stuff, use it daily and recommend it to others?
Those are the people you want to target in all your advertising efforts.
The more detailed you can be, the better. Make sure you know who they are, what they like, and where they hang out online.
To be a little more mobile specific, figure out what mobile devices they use (apple vs. android for example), what apps they use, what social media platforms they are active on via mobile, what games they play and what sites, forums, Facebook groups and the likes they frequent or are a part of.
The better you know your target audience, the easier it will become to create high converting ads and offers.
Start Small
It’s easy to get excited when you’ve created your first mobile ad. You want to blast it out there and then sit back and watch your business grow. Here’s the hard truth.
There’s a good chance that your first few ads won’t convert all that well.
If you’ve done your homework and come up with something that’s targeted well for your ideal audience, you may be lucky and break even.
If you don’t, don’t get discouraged. It takes some tweaking to get the ad, the offer, the call to action, and target audience right.
Start small and don’t spend more than $5 per day. Play around with the ad until you come up with a winning combination.
Realize That Mobile Ads Are Different From Other Ads
If you’ve been running online ads for a while, you’ll have a leg up on anyone new to this type of advertising, but don’t assume that the ads you’re running already will work just as well on mobile.
Mobile Advertisements are different.
They are viewed on a very different screen and your end user is in a different frame of mind when he’s on his smartphone than when he’s sitting at his laptop at work for example.
Keep that in mind as you research mobile ads and get started with this marketing medium.
Research Each Platform And Figure Out What Works
Not only is mobile advertising in general different from other ways to run online ads, each platform is different as well.
They attract different audiences, display differently, and the final ads are shown in different places.
An in-game ad for example is very different from a mobile Facebook ad.
Take your time and research each platform before you start to invest in advertising there. Yes, your existing ads will be a good starting point.
Compare them to what others are doing on that platform, tweak as needed and give it a try with a small budget.
Test and tweak as needed until you figure out what works (and what doesn’t).
Spy On Your Competition
I’ve hinted at this sneaky, but oh so powerful technique a few times throughout this report. It’s my favorite way to shortcut my way to winning ads.
Simply take a look at what others are doing and come up with a similar ad that works for your business, your brand, and your products.
This strategy works best if you can spy on close competitors.
If you’re selling an online course on publishing kindle books, take a look at others with similar training courses and the mobile advertising they are doing.
If you have a local bakery and are using mobile ads to get more customers in your store, look at what other small bakeries are doing online.
Don’t limit yourself to your direct competitors. Instead find bakeries across the country that are innovative in their online advertising campaigns.
Once you find your competition and start spying on them, pay attention to what platforms they advertise on.
What do the ads look like and where exactly do they appear. Click through and study the offer and landing pages. Learn what you can and start to emulate.
That’s how you’ll get good fast.
Test And Tweak Then Start Spending More Once You Know It Works
Last but not least it’s important to test and track everything. The beauty of mobile advertising, and online advertising in general, is that it is easy to track everything.
You can make small changes and see how they impact overall performance, cost, and conversions. Keep a close eye on your return on investment and you’ll do well.
Keep testing and tweaking until you find ads that work well for you.
Then it’s simply a matter of opening the faucet, increasing your mobile advertising budget and watching your business grow.
Conclusion: Your Mobile Marketing Journey
We’ve covered a lot in this guide, exploring the essentials of evergreen mobile marketing. Let’s quickly recap what we learned.
First, we established why mobile marketing is critical. The statistics are undeniable: mobile is only growing in importance.
In fact, many developing nations are bypassing landlines and desktops entirely, going straight to mobile.
This clearly illustrates how deeply integrated mobile devices, and the information and products they access, have become in our daily lives.
Next, we focused on preparing your online business for mobile. This included ensuring every component of your digital presence is mobile-ready.
We even got into the exciting world of mobile app development, showing you how to get started with creating your own app.
Finally, we explored various mobile advertising networks and shared best practices to maximize your campaigns.
To wrap things up, here are my top five essential Mobile Marketing Tips to keep in mind at all times:
- Know Your Target Audience: Understand how they use their mobile devices.
- Ensure Mobile-Friendly Sales Funnel: Every step of your sales process must be optimized for mobile.
- Start Small and Test: Begin with small campaigns and test thoroughly to find what works best.
- Scale and Optimize: Once an ad performs well, increase your investment and continue tweaking for maximum ROI.
- Create Concise Content: Mobile users prefer short, to-the-point ads and content.
- Develop an App: Consider creating a mobile app to enhance how users consume your content and products.
- Leverage Mobile as a Communication Channel: Utilize mobile marketing as an additional way to connect with your target audience.
- Monitor Competitors: Observe your competition for fresh ad and marketing ideas.
- Research New Platforms: Investigate each new mobile marketing platform to understand its effectiveness.
- Continuously Optimize: Always be testing, adapting, and improving your mobile marketing strategies.
I hope this evergreen mobile marketing guide was both helpful and inspiring.
