Thursday, November 3, 2011

Simple Guide On How Mobile Marketing Works

Mobile marketing can be an essential part of business planning, but understanding it and creating the right marketing plan can be tricky. There are so many techniques, codes, applications and formats to make sense of and choose the right ones. Here are some steps you can take to ensure you create a great mobile marketing plan.

Social Networking is Part of the Plan

Do not limit your mobile marketing to a mobile website. These websites must remain relatively small and do not allow you to do much. Take advantage of the efforts social networks do to provide people with apps: send your customers a lin to your Facebook page or to your Twitter feed.

Get your location-based pages in the social media.  You should have pages on Google Places, Foursquare and Facebook Places to start.  Begin with the basics, and set up your business pages to include custom headers and logos.  Once you have these pages set up, branch out onto other sites, such as Gowalla and Scavngr.

Design your mobile ads so that they are interactive and sharable. Many cell phone users have a natural affinity for sharing and some will 'like' your ad on facebook or 'tweet' about it on twitter if the option is available. This can bring your ad to a  whole new audience without you having to pay any extra money. Additionally, a lots of people like to comment of ads. If your ad campaign has lots of comments, it can significantly increase your company's visibility in the marketplace.

Twitter Me This, I'll Twitter You That

Make sure you're keeping track of your social media presence as a mobile marketer. If you have a Facebook or Twitter page, you want to monitor what people are thinking of you and how many folks like/dislike you in general. This will allow you to fix some things to better cater to your audience.

Make sure you mention your mobile marketing campaign in your other marketing efforts. You could have a link on your website where people can sign up for it, or mention it on your Facebook or Twitter page. If people know about your mobile marketing campaign, they will be more likely to sign up for it.

Do not limit your mobile marketing to a mobile website. These websites must remain relatively small and do not allow you to do much. Take advantage of the efforts social networks do to provide people with apps: send your customers a lin to your Facebook page or to your Twitter feed.

Mobile Phones, Smart Phones & iPads OH MY

Know your audience. If you are planning to market to mobile phones, you should design your ad around them. Many phone have difficulty downloading large amounts of data. If it takes too long to download, many people will simply exit the program before it even reaches the point where they can see your message.

Make your website easily navigable to mobile devices. While you may know your site works for larger computers and tablets, you need to be sure it will work for mobile phones as well. Test it using your own mobile device to see how it handles, and make any necessary changes.

You must get someone's permission to send them messages. If you do not, it will be considered as spam and you could get in trouble over it. Ask people to sign up as customers, and have them tick a box that said they agree to receive promotional offers via their mobile phones.

Smart Phones - The Technology is Every Changing

Don't forget email when you are building your mobile marketing strategy. Modern smart phones have rich email clients or the ability to open web-based email clients like Gmail or Yahoo. If you are targeting mobile users with your email campaign, be sure to optimize you email creative to make sure it is effective on a smaller screen.

For the most technology savvy customers, include QR codes on all printed advertisements. This is an easy way for people with smart phones to access your website and/or coupons. Print the QR codes on brochures, posters, catalogs and business card. A customer may be genuinely interested in your product or service and a QR code ensures that they can instantly learn more about your company.

As you read, mobile marketing can be an incredibly important to your current and future business planning and so is understanding all the different techniques. This is so it makes it easier for you to understand which ones fit your personal business needs. Following the above tips, is a very good starting place.

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