Mobile Marketing Strategy

What Is Mobile Marketing?

It’s hard to create a list of things that have seen as much widespread adoption as mobile has. Not only does everyone and their brother own a mobile device, but mobile has fundamentally altered consumer behavior. The way consumers live out their daily lives looks drastically different than it did a few decades ago. 

Mobile is not a trend; it’s the way of the future. Because of this, there’s a new way for marketers to engage with customers.

Enter mobile marketing. 

The meaning of mobile marketing can be explained as a type of marketing program a company runs to promote products and services to consumers on their mobile devices. 

But mobile marketing means more than just mobile apps. 

The ways marketers can start a conversation or engage with customers via mobile is almost endless. Think about the variety of things you do on your mobile phone. You text your family and friends throughout the day. You catch up on YouTube videos or TikToks during your lunch break. You (aimlessly) scroll on social media before bed. You place an online pickup order at your local grocery store. You even access a restaurant's menu via a QR code. 

The list goes on for what can be accomplished on mobile; and so does the list of ways you can include mobile into your overall marketing strategy. 

What Is Mobile Marketing Strategy?

Your mobile marketing strategy should encompass multiple mobile channels available in the market, not just one. For instance, you would likely want to take advantage of channels including SMS, mobile apps, mobile ads, and mobile search, instead of just relying on one of these to achieve your business goals.

Mobile isn’t a silver bullet for marketers; there is no such thing. However, mobile is the next thing which is why your marketing strategy should consider testing multiple channels to engage with your customers. For example, if you are a lawn care manufacturer, your mobile marketing strategy might include mobile ads to generate brand awareness for a new riding lawn mower, as well as a mobile app for customers to help them get onboarded to their new lawn mowers properly. 

Here’s what a well thought-out mobile marketing strategy includes: 

• Defined Goals - What do you hope to accomplish with your mobile marketing strategy? Your goals should be more specific than just “launching a mobile app”. They should follow the SMART criteria: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. 
• Detailed Tactics - What do you plan to do across each respective mobile marketing channel? 
• Target Audience - Define your ideal customer and understand their needs, wants, and behaviors before creating content and messaging. This will help make the content you do create more personalized for the specific audience you’re targeting. 
• Brand Positioning - Develop a consistent brand message and image that resonates with your target audience.
•  Success Metrics - Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and regularly measure and analyze your mobile marketing efforts to get a glimpse into the success of your campaign.
• Budget - Determine how much you can afford to spend on various mobile marketing initiatives and allocate your resources accordingly.

When defining your mobile marketing goals, it’s important to recognize that your methods may not be the same as your competition. Your business needs to do what’s best for your customers; sometimes certain channels your competitors are on don’t make sense for your target audience. 

Develop  an Omnichannel Strategy

While a mobile business strategy is crucial for engaging customers where they’re at, it should be one component of your overall marketing strategy - not your entire marketing strategy. 

For instance, while you target your customers are on mobile, there should still be additional layers to your marketing strategy that achieve an omnichannel approach. 

An omnichannel strategy is defined as a marketing strategy that is seamless and consistent across various channels. This can include things like social, email, phone calls, in-store signage, and mobile to get customers to engage with your brand. 

What Are Mobile Marketing Channels?

Before you launch your next mobile marketing campaign, it’s crucial to understand the types of mobile marketing channels available so you can make the best decision on how to proceed for your business. 

Mobile marketing channels:

• Mobile Advertising
• Mobile Apps
• SMS Campaigns
• Mobile Push Notifications
• QR Codes

Not every channel is going to work for your business. You’ll need to put yourself into your customer’s shoes and do some research. What channels are they on? Do you have a younger target audience that happens to use social media over other channels? Do you have an audience who prefers to do online research before making a buying decision? 

You can create surveys to gather these insights or use the numerous resources available like Pew Research Center or SparkToro to give you better insight into how your target audience behaves.  

Mobile Marketing Channels Strategy Overview 

Let’s say you work for a skincare brand and have a business goal of brand awareness for a new product that has just been released. Here are some ways you could use the channels mentioned above to help you accomplish this:

1. Mobile Ads - Get with your creative team and develop visually engaging graphics to launch mobile ads to get the word out there about your new product. Typically, ads won’t help convert consumers into customers, but they generate brand awareness where the customer might remember the name when going into stores. Typically it takes seven touches for messaging to stick with consumers, so starting with mobile ads is a great first step to launching your mobile marketing campaign 
2. Mobile Search - Next, you want to tackle the part of marketing where consumers recognize they have a problem and get searching for solutions. This might be running paid ads on keywords like “dry skin” or “new moisturizer” or something that you know your audience is likely searching for. There are a ton of tools out there to help you figure out what keywords you should target. 
3. Mobile Apps - The customer is in-store and they’re deciding between your brand’s product and a competitor’s. How do you help them sway towards your brand? Create an in-aisle digital experience app or a digital product quiz that explains the benefits of using your brand’s product over the competitor’s. You can also include exclusive content in these apps from influencers or your company’s CEO that engage with customers. Or you can include promotional deals to help sweeten the deal for your brand’s product. 

• SMS - Sometimes we all need a nudge. Create text messages for your customers who have opted into hearing from your brand on mobile to help spread the word about your new product. Much like the mobile app, these text messages can include promotional deals that help entice customers to purchase the product, or you can include text messages that lays out the benefits of using the new product. 

Mobile Marketing Real World Example

One best mobile marketing example to learn from is Burger King. The brand has had numerous stunts over the years to drive customers to purchase from its brand over its competition. 

And best of all? They do this through numerous mobile marketing channels. 

The types of mobile marketing campaigns they’ve displayed include QR codes on TV commercials, promotional campaigns to encourage mobile app downloads, and more. 

Mobile Marketing Software

Once you narrow down the channels that make sense for your brand, you can begin your search for mobile marketing software. There are a ton of options of tools out there to help you manage your mobile marketing strategy that ranges from SMS platforms to mobile apps, and more. 

To prove how large the martech landscape is and to give you a perspective on how many options are available for you to choose from, take a look at the martech landscape graphic created by Scott Brinker. There are now more than 11,000 martech solutions as of 2023.

What Are the Five Benefits of Mobile Marketing?

We couldn’t discuss a mobile marketing strategy without bringing up a few examples of mobile marketing advantages and disadvantages. You need to make an informed decision for your business instead of just diving in head first. 

Benefits of Mobile Marketing

1. Broad Access - It’s hard to think of a list of people in your life who don’t own a mobile device. It is predicted that there will be roughly 16.8 billion mobile devices in the U.S. in 2023. But these aren’t just younger generations driving up this widespread adoption; consumers of all ages are relying on mobile in their everyday lives. According to Pew Research,  61 percent of adults ages 65 and older own a smartphone. Eighty percent of adults between the ages of 50-64 own a mobile device. The usage continues to increase as the ages decrease. It’s clear to see that mobile is a widely adopted tool that the majority of consumers rely on on a daily basis. Mobile is the best channel to reach one’s target audience. 
2. Immediacy -  Instant gratification is the name of the game for consumers. We like things to be immediate. That’s part of the reason why we rely so heavily on mobile devices. Because consumers are spending up to five hours a day on their phones (and have it on their person at all times), the likelihood of consumers seeing your brand’s marketing campaign faster than other channels is high. 
3. Incredible Open and Response Rates with SMS - The average open rate for email is 21 percent. Want to take a guess at how high the open rates are for mobile messaging? Text has an open rate of 98 percent according to Gartner. Most marketers would dream of getting half as good email open rates. To top it off, mobile has a response rate of 45 percent, meaning it's a great channel to have a back-and-forth dialog between you and your customers. Marketers are constantly being asked to prove their worth, and open rates are a statistic that is often brought into these discussions. Wouldn’t it be great to demonstrate your campaigns have a 98 percent open rate?
4. Viral Button - Marketers are often asked, “Can you make this go viral?”. While there unfortunately is no such thing as a viral button, we do have the next best thing as marketers - mobile. The majority of viral moments happen on a mobile device. These moments are easy to share with your friends and family, and since we already proved how consumers carry their phones everywhere they go, mobile is the channel with the higher likelihood of engaging with your customers with your creative efforts and an increased likelihood of going viral.
5. Cost-effective - Running a print ad in a magazine can set you back $250,000. The cost of a 30-second TV commercial during primetime costs about $100,000. To add insult to injury, most consumers are not tuned into these advertisements.  So these traditional marketing channels aren’t only costly - they’re ineffective. Mobile marketing is a much more cost-effective channel compared to these traditional channels. Take a look at Lumavate’s Professional and Enterprise plans. On these subscription plans, marketers can send unlimited text messages in addition to creating mobile experiences for a fraction of what traditional channels would cost. 

When discussing the disadvantages of mobile marketing, almost any argument can be countered with a solution to mitigate any concerns. 

For example, one might say that a disadvantage to mobile marketing is the rising concerns surrounding data privacy among consumers. Brands that are transparent in how they collect zero-party data can actually win over consumers and turn them into lifelong buyers if they know their data is protected.

How Do You Create a Mobile Marketing Strategy?

The types of mobile marketing strategies you can create depend on several things including your business goals, mobile marketing channels, audience, and more. 

But no matter what type of mobile marketing software you choose to invest in, there are some mobile marketing best practices to follow: 

1. Provide True Value - We’ve all received some sort of communication that after reading we sit there questioning what the point of spending time on that was. Train your customers to read your mobile messages and not immediately delete them by crafting messages that provide some sort of value for the customer, whether that be exclusive content, promotions, updates on safety information, etc. 
2. Optimize for Mobile - While this may sound obvious, it’s important to keep in mind your digital experiences should be designed mobile-first. What does that mean? When designing for a mobile-first experience, you should consider things like reachability, readability, gestures, etc. Check out our guide to learn more about mobile design best practices
   
3. Refrain from Over Messaging - Marketers get excited about new mobile marketing tools in their arsenal. This is all fun and games until marketers start over-messaging their customers. There is a ton of data out there that can help you determine how often you should be sending your customers text messages, but try to keep it to just a few times a week and not every day. 

Level Up Your Mobile Marketing Strategy

Schedule a demo with one of our mobile marketing experts to see how we can help get you started. Or take a self-guided tour of our platform to see first-hand all that’s possible.