Mobile Marketing Gets The Thumbs Up!
Web development is steering the mobile internet centre stage as the growing use of smartphones means that website accessibility on the move is opening up the opportunity for instant, cost effective mobile marketing.
It has been suggested by analyst firm, Morgan Stanley, that within five years, more users will connect to the internet via mobile devices than desktops! AdMob, one of the world’s largest mobile advertising networks, reports that in January 2010, Android and iPhone users spend about 80 minutes a day using apps.
Although mobile internet is still an emergent technology, it is an intrinsic social media tool and the possibilities for developing marketing strategies to instantly capture search visitor-to-customer conversion traffic is potentially huge!
A key component of online marketing is search engine optimisation to deliver the most appropriate content to customer search, and mobile is no exception. Your website design should not just be accessible on a mobile device, but also appropriate for the experience by making sure you fully understand what motivates your users to open your site on their device.
It’s useful to divide mobile internet users into three segmented groups:
• Casual: closely resembling the desktop ‘surfer’ looking for information. Cater to their requirement for very concise, targeted content.
• Repeat: mostly motivated by specific news or realtime data. A website with a large mobile return segment should ensure the most requested pages are available in as few clicks as possible. Provide short and easy to use URLs for deeper or out-of-standard-range content.
• Urgent: very much business-type dependent, this could be the most important group to target by supplying the instant service and info response these customers require. Decisive features to include are : store locators, driving directions, order status, and product availability search.
Mobile users have unique search needs! They will use a search engine to find your site with minimal keystrokes, driven by convenience rather than necessity, because they are looking for more detailed critical information.
Sites successfully found are those that have been fully and correctly optimised for the mobile experience and provide only the most useful information, such as directions and phone numbers.
Top search engines all have mobile equivalents and you need to inform by separate submission that you wish to receive mobile traffic.
Remember – mobile is about fast action. Regardless of target group, highlight instant easy usability by reducing all content to the barest minimum.