Generating Leads With Mobile Marketing

Whether it’s viewing a website on your phone or playing an online game on your tablet, by now, you’ve probably been exposed to mobile marketing.

What is mobile marketing, exactly? Mobile marketing is as simple as optimizing your marketing strategies for people using a mobile device-it doesn’t actually have anything to do with the device itself. According to a Google Report, over 90% of people use multiple screens to accomplish a task.

What does that mean? Well, it means that someone could start reading an article on their phone, continue on their iPad and finish on their laptop. To make things easier for them, your job is to create a seamless, optimized experience for every single device. That means, if a website loads on their laptop, make sure people are also able to view it on their phones.

How do you make sure that every person on a mobile device has a seamless, optimized experience? Well you need to put some thought into responsive design and mobile ROI. When your website has a responsive design, it will be formatted properly across any device and you can start generating leads based on similar tactics I’ve already covered in previous blog posts such as Top 12 Calls-to-Action.

A Mobile Strategy Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Building an App

If you’re thinking that all mobile strategy leads to app creation, stop it. Mobile strategy is about much more than an app. It’s about driving traffic to your website using responsive design. Responsive design gives users an optimized experience while browsing through your website no matter what they use, from their phones and tablets to laptops or desktop computers. This web design concept automatically re-packages the design so that it fits the device viewing it. What makes it versatile is because you can even use free website building tools like WordPress.com and it will allow you to preview how each template design you’ve chosen or created looks on a laptop, a tablet or a phone.

Top 4 Benefits of Responsive Design

1) Responsive design leads to higher conversion rates

Close to 70% of users are more likely to purchase a product if the website is mobile friendly. That means closer to 30% of users will leave the website if it’s not optimized for their conversion experience.

Take a look at this example of the RW & CO clothing website. Not only do you have to scroll down quite a ways to get to the clothing items you’re looking for, but every time you want to zoom in on an item, you have to pinch your fingers together, if you want to zoom out, you have to spread your fingers apart. Add that to the fact that you also have to wait for longer load times.

Compare that to Nike US’s mobile website and immediately after you enter the URL, you’re taken to a main page where you can see all the links immediately, the photos load up quick and crisp and navigation is breeze to scroll through. In a few clicks, you can find what you’re looking for.

So remember, the easier it is to convert on a website and for customers to find what they’re looking for, the more likely it is that customers will purchase products on the mobile site. Just help them along by making your website mobile-friendly.

2) Responsive design is less stressful to maintain than apps

Even though it may seem like a lot of work to manage and maintain content and design on several versions of the same website, in fact, with responsive design, you only have to update ONE version of your website because it’s just one device that conforms to the size of the screen. So, with one update, you can still maintain a website that’s easy to access to across all devices!

The result is that you save time, money and energy and you don’t have to have a web developer make updates for you! You avoid bottlenecks, save time on meetings and the approval process, which will help your marketing department become more efficient!

3) Responsive design improves SEO

As you probably know by now, it’s vital to optimize your webpages with the keywords you’re trying to rank for. By having responsive design, you can update your web pages once and your website will automatically update across all platforms. Responsive design also eliminates the chances of you publishing duplicate content and splitting your inbound links.

Also, one URL helps Google establish indexing properties for your content on the website which helps the site rank better. Google also ranks mobile-optimized sites higher in mobile searches. With 15% of traffic coming from mobile devices, it’s really important how well your website ranks.

4) Responsive design calls for better usability

Having a mobile-optimized website allows for better usability because it fits all different screen sizes. Moreover, according to Google, close to 75% of users want mobile sites to fit their smartphone screens better, have bigger CTA buttons, scroll up and down rather than left to right and be more clean and efficient.

Responsive design satisfies all these requests from mobile users by fitting into screens of varying sizes, having bigger CTA buttons, be clean and efficient and allow users to scroll up and down.

Now that we’ve covered why and how responsive design works to help you generate more website traffic, here’s 6 tactics that will help you generate leads.

1) Employ Progressive Profiling Forms

Most of the time, web forms can be too small for a mobile site, not to mention all the scrolling and zooming it you’d have to do to see and fill in the entire form.

But forms are vital to marketers, it’s a great lead capturing device, so you can’t exactly get rid of them. That’s where progressive profiling forms come in.

Progressive profiling technology is an extension of dynamic form fields allows you to set up forms that designate what questions appear to each lead based on what you already know about them. That way, every time a lead fills out the form, you’re progressively gathering more information and keeping your forms short and easy to complete. This helps you optimize your mobile site with shorter forms and higher conversions.

2) Create Simpler CTAs.

This is a topic I’ve already covered in my post on the Top 12 Tips for Great CTAs, but on mobile sites, it’s even more important. Make sure whatever images you use are large enough with clear text on them that get your point across quickly.

3) Provide Discounts and Customer Loyalty

You can measure your mobile presence through discounts like promo codes and customer loyalty discounts that are redeemable through your mobile device. Starbucks is a great example. Mayors of individual Starbucks stores were able to unlock the Mayor Offer and enjoy a money-saving perk for their frequent store check-ins.

4) Optimize Content for a Mobile Screen

When you’re writing for a mobile audience, there’s a few things you need to remember. Frontload your content in case people don’t read all the way to the bottom and don’t put the punch line as the last line of the article and make sure the purpose of the article is visible from the beginning. Bold your headlines and make them something that people will want to share. Lastly, test some of your content to see what your audiences like better. Are top 10 lists getting more shares and comments or are how-to articles?

5) Make Your Phone Number an Active Link

When someone picks up their phone, they’re much more action-oriented than if they were on a laptop. Whether it’s searching for a website, opening an app or composing an email, people tend to do a lot more on their phones. Knowing this, one of the most effective ways to get your potential customers to the point of conversion faster is to make your phone number a clickable link. By doing so, they can automatically give you a call for more information. The fewer steps it takes for a potential customer to act, the more likely it is that they’ll do it rather than leaving the website.

6) Try a Text Campaign

Although this might seem like a riskier option, there is still room in a marketing strategy for you to try an SMS campaign. Take Julep, for example. They ran a SMS coupon campaign for their newest nail polish and Julep was able to track what percentage of their mobile subscribers clicked on the link in their SMS coupon and how many of those subscribers purchased the promotion. This one SMS coupon generated a 34.23% click-through rate, and an astounding 17.44% purchase conversion rate based on subscribers that clicked the link.

How to Unlock Mobile ROI

Online-On Device Conversion

Most businesses allow customers to purchase products through their mobile sites. 61% of consumers have said that if they can’t find a product in that mobile site, they’ll turn to the competitors. The easier it is to convert on a website, the less likely consumers will turn to competitors. You must also make sure that the flow and design of your mobile site is optimized for the best usability.

Online-Mobile Apps

Apps are popular because they can resourceful and easy to use. Typically, a purchase can be made within two steps, which makes them an efficient alternative to mobile sites.

The travel booking agency Priceline recognizes that 82% of their customers make their bookings less than a day before their arrival. So, they made their app easier to book reservations on the go. On the Starbucks mobile app, you can purchase items, locate the nearest location, reload your Starbucks card or share your purchases via social media.

Offline-Click to Call

Lots of times, consumers want to be able to phone the businesses easily. Comcast makes it easy for users to call them by including their phone number in their mobile site and their search ads. The company built a mobile ad extension that allow people to call directly from the search results.

As a result, Comcast got a 270% click through rate through their mobile ads than their desktop search ads.

All of these points indicate just how valuable mobile sites are to your overall marketing strategy. By providing mobile users with the information that you know they’re looking for, you can guide them through to a purchasing decision; which helps your business and leads to happy customers.

Keep reading every week to get more posts on awesome marketing strategies and tips on how to use different marketing tools. In meantime, learn more about how to understand your customers better!

Generating Leads With Mobile Marketing