Boost your mobile marketing with digital advertising. Learn how to strategize and measure success for a winning approach. Ready to succeed?
Ready to fast-track your mobile marketing plan? Then it would help if you embraced the art of digital advertising for mobile devices.
In today’s article, we’re taking an in-depth look at the importance of having a mobile marketing strategy and how to use digital advertising to support your plan. Ready to learn more?
Let’s take a look.
1. The importance of mobile marketing
In 2021, the internet had 7.1 billion mobile users worldwide — a number forecast to reach nearly 7.5 billion by 2025. If that’s not enough to showcase how important mobile marketing has become, we’re not sure what is.
As increasingly more people turn to mobile devices for work, entertainment, and shopping, businesses have an incredible opportunity to use these natural online occurrences for advertising potential.
The average time users spend daily on the phone — not counting talking on the phone — has recently increased, reaching a total of four and a half hours as of April 2022. By 2024, experts predict that this number will increase to four hours and nearly forty minutes.
In other words, if you haven’t taken advantage of mobile advertising, now’s the time to embrace this exciting chance to expand your marketing efforts. Thus, your in-house marketing team or agency you want to collaborate with should implement effective mobile marketing strategies.
2. Why do you need a mobile website?
A mobile website is where everything begins. Consider it your mobile marketing “hub,” if you will. As the cornerstone of your mobile marketing campaigns, your mobile website will act like an anchor, giving your funnels a backbone to stand on.
Starting an ad campaign with a lead magnet? Your website can host a connected landing page that helps you collect email marketing opt-ins. Running mobile PPC ads to help sell your latest product line?
Your mobile website can host a quick checkout flow to help interested buyers purchase the advertised products in seconds. The configuration of a mobile website allows mobile users to view it clearly and navigate through it smoothly on any smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
And speaking of smooth navigation…
3. Make sure your mobile website is user-friendly
It’s crucial that your mobile website is user-friendly and feels highly intuitive when a mobile user accesses it on any device. In other words, your target audience expects a relevant and frictionless experience when they use your mobile site.
An easy way to help visitors feel at ease? Use a video presentation maker to record a short explainer video walking them through what your business does and how it can help them solve their problems.
For instance, if you’re a career coach, you could start with a quick introduction, then share why you got into the business, which you specialize in helping (i.e., mid-level professionals), and what they can expect to walk away with (for instance, career clarity and a job search strategy).
Or you can tug on emotion and produce a longer, more heartfelt video on why you got into coaching, like the following one from BetterUp:
VIDEO EMBED CODE (see comment for code)
Here are some additional tips you can use to make sure your mobile site is user-friendly:
Make sure all images, text, and graphics load quickly
Make sure all images, text, and graphics are easy to see and read
Ensure there’s plenty of negative space and nothing looks crowded
Organize all pages, tabs, and links
Work with a web developer or mobile website app to create an intuitive design
Create a fast, easy, and intuitive checkout flow
Ensure your site loads without any lags, bugs, or glitches
4. How to target your audience effectively with mobile ads?
Organic strategies like content and social media marketing are great ways to build long-term relationships with potential customers. But when looking for quick sales, you can’t ignore the power of mobile advertising.
And here’s where creating compelling ad copy and optimizing your display ads for mobile devices becomes paramount.
According to Google, if you want to connect with smartphone users, your ad text needs to highlight why you have what a user is looking for — find the most valuable thing about your business and build your ads around that insight.
While you can manually create and test your ad headlines and text, Google strongly recommends using its responsive search ads for a quicker, more optimized approach. With responsive search ads, your mobile ad campaigns adapt to show more relevant messaging to your customers.
When crafting your ad, you’ll enter multiple headlines and descriptions (include keywords based on your audience’s search intent!). Then, Google Ads will automatically test different combinations to learn which ones perform best. Genius! Here are some additional benefits of using responsive search ads:
Pro-Tip: The more headlines and descriptions you enter, the more opportunities Google Ads has to present ads that closely match your target market’s search queries. According to Google, this can help improve your ad performance.
5. Create a mobile app
In-app ads are a super easy way to present offers to your customers, but you must create a mobile app first. Luckily, with app builders, like Passion.io, anyone can create their own branded app to sell a course, service, membership, or product.
Once you’ve set up your mobile app, you can set up push notifications to:
Remind app users when a product launches
Present personalized offers
Share news and company updates
Share exclusive app-only deals
You can also display banner ads to help capture your customers’ attention when they’re inside your app. When setting these up, use striking images and simple, relevant calls to action, like “Getting ready to go on vacation?
Grab our sunnies for half-off, today only!” or “Craving Something Sweet? Check out our Labor Day Munchie Boxes!”. When choosing which products and deals to feature in your in-app ads, focus on the offers your customers have shown the most interest in.
6. Use SMS marketing to connect with customers
Once you have your customer’s contact information, plan to follow up with them consistently via text message. If you’re still getting to know your customers, using SMS to send surveys, polls, and feedback questionnaires is a great way to learn more about their needs and expectations.
Once you understand your customers well, segment them and plan relevant messaging for each group. Here are some examples of texts you can send to encourage sales and continue building relationships with your customers:
Sales announcements — BOGOs, last-minute deals, and coupon codes
Event and holiday recognition
Points tracking updates
Company announcements
Giveaway announcements
Gamified texts, for instance, “Spin the wheel for a chance to win!”
Gifts for special holidays, such as birthdays and customer anniversaries
Friendly check-ins (i.e., “Just stopping in to say ‘hi’! Let us know how we can serve you better today!”)
7. Take advantage of social media on mobile
Social media channels have released several creative ways to use mobile ads to capture your target audience’s attention — from newsfeed ads to Story ads to DM ads. For instance, you can create ads that click on Instagram chats in Ads Manager.
Here’s how it works:
These ads appear in Instagram Feeds or Stories and allow users to start a message thread with your business after clicking on your ad or performing an action.
Once they click on your ad or act — for instance, commenting “I’m ready!” to get your free eBook — your business can auto-send them a DM with prompt responses. Here, you can auto-interact with users to complete purchases, supply download links, or offer additional support!
If you decide to use social media ads, consider testing ads for users at various stages in the marketing funnel and social media platforms.
For instance, for ToFu prospects, you might test centering an ad around a lead magnet; for MoFu leads, you might offer a webinar invitation; and for BoFu leads, you might create an ad around a case study, customer story or demo invitation.
8. Optimize your website for search engines
This goes without saying, but you should continually optimize any site, page, or profile your business uses on the internet — especially your mobile website — for search engines.
If you don’t have experience doing so, work with an SEO strategist to decide on main keywords, semantic keywords, page titles, and metadata details. They can help you optimize every page on your site with search intent in mind.
You can also kick SEO up a notch by creating an optimized blog, help center, and knowledge on your website. Here’s an in-depth SEO starter guide from Google to help you understand how website optimization works.
Conclusion
And there you have it! Today we explored how digital advertising can support your mobile marketing plan. What is your next step? Meet with your marketing team to put a mobile strategy into action.
You’ll also need to develop a system to track and measure the success of your mobile advertising campaigns so you can course-correct as needed. That’s it, for now, marketers.
Guillaume is a digital marketer focused on handling the outreach strategy at uSERP and content management at Wordable. Outside of work, he enjoys his ex-pat life in sunny Mexico, reading books, wandering around and catching the latest shows on TV.