Designing a Marketing Strategy for Mobile Viewers

You’ve finally sensed the shifting tide. Everywhere you go, people are using their smartphones to access the Internet. Almost two out of three people in Australia have an Internet-enabled smartphone, and those numbers are set to rise steadily. As technology becomes cheaper and smartphone plans become more flexible worldwide, Gigaom estimates that 60 percent of the world will have smartphone subscription plans within the next five years.

Capitalizing on this smartphone boom, however, is not as easy as it sounds. Making the transition from PC and laptop-based websites to those that can be optimized for mobile can cause confusion for the uninitiated. Here are a few simple marketing tips for designing your mobile site.

Responsive Design is King

Using a responsive design for your website is probably the most important step that you can take to making your website mobile friendly. A responsive design is simply one that optimizes your website for the different sizes and shapes of mobile phones and tablets. With a responsive design, you don’t have to design and maintain an entirely separate site for your mobile customers, saving you time and money. In addition, Google has even put responsive design as an industry best practice, giving an extra incentive for you to implement this mobile friendly web design.

Study Your Market before Placing Content

When creating content for your website, ihub media says it’s important to consider the type of content your viewers prefer. For example, do they prefer longer or shorter lengths? How often should you switch the length of your content? What’s the right mix of written, picture, and video content? Checking out your analytics and other data will give you a good sense of what type of content your readers prefer. After you’ve implemented your mobile friendly site, you can again look at various forms of feedback to determine whether or not your customers are enjoying your content.

Get “Appy”

Designing a useful app is a great strategy for targeting mobile users. Having your own app can have direct financial benefits for your business. You may choose to sell your app as a product or use app advertisements to make money. You app may be able to provide other benefits to your customers that a website simply can’t provide, such as easy and quick user login and account management. Apps can also improve your profit margin. According to mashable.com, customers who visit retailers through iPhone apps have 30 percent higher conversion rates than those who go straight to the website. Whatever the case, it’s best to analyse your personal niche and platform and see whether developing an app may be a good choice for your business.

Social Media

With a whopping 71 percent of people using their mobiles just to access social media sites, according to an Adobe consumer survey, it’s clear that social media can have a big part to play in your mobile marketing strategy. Integrating your mobile friendly website with social media is critical in grabbing the attention of these mobile users. The most popular social media sites have flexible advertisement packages that will allow you to not only choose your own budget, but also to send specifically targeted ads to those who will be most likely to respond positively to it. In addition, your own social media sites can serve as a free platform for advertising your products, and they are a powerful way to engage in interaction with your potential customers.

For those who were on the fence, it’s clear that you should jump on the mobile bandwagon as soon as possible. With a frighteningly quick rate of adoption by Internet users worldwide, mobile usage is quickly becoming the avenue of first choice for people to find out information on products relevant to them. By using these important tips, you too can add value to your mobile business strategy.