Social media promotions such as contests, giveaways, etc. are useful mobile marketing and mCommerce tactics that create more engagement with businesses and consumers/clients. By bringing these promotions mobile, you are once again bringing the ease and convenience to your audience:
- SMS mobile marketing: As mentioned earlier, SMS campaigns are an easy way to reach out to customers. Anyone with a cell phone can receive SMS messages (simple text messages), therefore providing you with a wide audience reach. Although easy and cheap, you do have to be careful of becoming yet another spammer and scaring away customers instead of bringing them in. To make SMS mobile marketing work for you be careful of who you are sending your promotional code out to, how frequently you are sending out SMS messages, and make sure you are staying within legality limits for SMS mobile marketing.
- Email campaigns: These can act as a successful marketing tool, but make sure that the email you send out is optimized for mobile usage! Over 75% of users check their email on their mobile device, so it is crucial that you pay attention to your email design, keep the message short and concise, and make any links or attachments clear and easy to click.
- Social Media Integration: Promote through your social media pages, as these should be easily accessible through mobile devices. You can either create a separate page for your promotion and provide links on your {Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, etc.} pages or just promote directly through these pages. Pay attention to the value of image implementation when integrating social media into your campaign. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” only begins to describe the effectiveness of visual marketing!
- QR Codes: Another popular choice for your social media promotion is to use a QR code (i.e. the 2 dimensional bar code that Smartphone users can install a scanner app for). What’s great about the QR code is it employs traditional methods of static advertising (placed on window, bus, bench ads and more) yet when scanned, brings you into the mobile world, leading a user right to your choice of URL. This creates a unique user experience where they may come across the QR code by chance in their mobilized lives, but then it brings them to you through their device. QR codes are a fun gimmick that can even go on your business cards! Just be careful how you use them – you want to make sure they serve a purpose other than simply bringing users to your website. Have them link to a social media promotion, make sure they bring the user to a mobile-friendly site, and test it first!
If using a site like Google Analytics, you can also see how your site has been accessed, so you can follow and analyze trends, and see if your mobile marketing strategy is succeeding. Their Mobile Devices report breaks down visitor statistics by mobile device, provider, brand, etc. which can be very helpful in understanding your mobile traffic. There is a lot you can do with mobile marketing strategy, and we’ve only begun to scratch the surface for you. Mobile device sales and usage trends support the move towards the mobile marketing world, so hop aboard before you get stuck in static!
Thanks to Jess Spar for information
