There are many ways you can take advantage of mobile marketing solutions and Mobile App marketing offers an incredible versatility. Apps offer businesses an incredible opportunity to market their business to a quickly expanding mobile market. If you’ve never heard of using mobile apps as an effective mobile marketing solution, please read on.
How can you make mobile Apps a part of your mobile marketing solution? One of the most significant benefits of mobile apps, compared to a basic mobile website, is they provide features designed to help you send your marketing message to a broad spectrum of users and potential customers. In many instances, this marketing process is free.
Mobile Apps Offer A Cost Effective Marketing Solution
Push notifications is a mobile marketing trend you want to become familiar with. A push notification is a text message that can be sent via your App allowing you to promote your products and services, absolutely free. By adding your Mobile App to their phone, you can notify the receiver about specific discounts or time-sensitive offers. You can expect a high open rate because the user has agreed to accept to receive your notifications. SMS text messaging is similar and can be just as effective, however, push notifications will not cost you while each SMS text generally costs you per message sent.
Imagine your message going viral. If an App user likes your message (and you can check it with the help of Mobile app promotion tools), discount, or special offer, they have the option of sending your message out to their friends and family or post on Facebook and Twitter. Are you beginning to see the huge potential of this type of marketing? Building your custom App built will initially cost you money but as more people add your App to their phone, you’ll be able to grow your prospect and customer base sometimes very quickly. Communicating directly with your App users will give your business that boost to grow more profitable in the process.
53% of the smart phone users, a total of 130 million out of 245 million subscribers, in the US are currently using their phones to access the internet. Though this number is growing in the US, globally the ratio is even higher with China and India leading the world in mobile phone usage and internet access.
As price points drop and technology improves, smart phones will dominate the world of communications over the next few years. This rapidly growing market offers a clear opportunity for those who incorporate mobile marketing today into their media mix to improve sales, increase their customer base and expand sales opportunities to an existing market.
Advances In Mobile Marketing Improve Your ROI
SMS text messaging is only one of several marketing tools when it comes to maximizing your advertising budget. Check out a few other methods to consider to target your market across the mobile domain.
1) Mobile Advertisements – also known as Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising, there are variety of mobile advertising platforms offering business the ability to promote text links or banners ads to mobile users. Anyone who clicks on your ads can be sent to your mobile website, or asked to opt in to get a freebie or discount on your products or services, and will be included in a list of responsive prospects. Similar to Adwords, this advertising platform will offer you tracking and other significant statistics to help you determine who you should be targeting.
2) Location Based Marketing – Foursquare is an excellent example of a location marketing service provider. Services include the ability for users to receive coupons, win points, in addition to promoting products and services. Location based marketing can help businesses build brand awareness. Your marketing message has the potential to go viral by customers who use their mobile phones to share content on Twitter and Facebook. Imagine the possibilities!
3) QR Codes – You have probably wondered what those odd shaped bar codes were on posters around town. These are bar codes on steroids and an excellent example of mobile marketing technology. Once a smart phone user scans the QR Code, they are redirected to a promotional page or web site with your specific offer. QR codes provide a real time, on-site mobile marketing tool….It is like having a salesperson wherever you have the code displayed. This technology works for the one-man shop as well as for a Fortune 1,000 corporation. QR codes are cost effective tools to target mobile users and they give the advertiser more control over where they send potential prospects and customers.
Mobile marketing offers businesses of all sizes the ability to promote their products and services to smart phone users who access the internet. The best approach is to plan your strategy step by step and we will start with a few basic and highly effective strategies to achieve your mobile marketing goals. Your particular marketing plan will determine which step you will want to take first.
Cost Effective Mobile Marketing Options
Taking advantage of today’s mobile marketing trends and create, or pay a web designer to create, a mobile website is no longer an option. To attract more customers you need to provide your visitors with an optimized web experience that caters to smart phone and tablet screen users. It is estimated that very soon, if not already, more people around the world will be accessing the internet on their mobile phones, surpassing the number of desktop computer internet users. When will you take advantage of the next wave in marketing?
Among the different ways to benefit from mobile marketing is SMS text messaging marketing. By adding your mobile website address along with an SMS shortcode to your print media you can greatly increase the chances of new customers and repeat business from existing customers. Get into the habit of adding your mobile number and mobile website URL to your business cards. By adding your shortcode to flyers you are offering customers the ability to take advantage of a discount when they respond. Imagine you own a restaurant that delivers pizza. Each pizza delivery would include a flyer asking your customers to type in your SMS shortcode, as soon as they “opt in” to your SMS list, you can send them texts offering them a discount the next time they order a pizza.