Mobile Marketing is About More Than Ads and Apps
Although the advertisements and the applications that are associated with mobile marketing are taking up all of the sexy space in news columns, those things are definitely not the entirety of the discipline. As a matter of fact, any company that relies on ads and apps in order to get the job done will be sorely disappointed – these things do not create the loyal customer base that a company needs in order to survive.
What then is the use of ads and apps in a mobile marketing campaign? How can they be properly used in order to provide positive results for a company? What other disciplines are necessary for a holistic approach to mobile marketing and an ROI that is sustainable?
The Basics of Mobile Marketing
First of all, the company needs to have its placement in the mobile community solidified before any ads or third-party apps will work. Site content should be well indexed within the major search engines, links should be current and active, and the content itself should be technologically current. Without this in place, any extra marketing will be ineffective with results that are quite short-lived at best.
There is a bit of natural promotion that comes with content that is trusted by the major search engines. There is also a bit of natural promotion that comes with content that is well organized. Both character traits will cause a “memory” of sorts to open up between your site and the major search engines. Marketing efforts here will work out well because your site will be seen as a trusted source for certain particular topic areas.
With all marketing the goal should be to have a consistently rising and constant audience. The major search engines will look at the analytics such as “stickiness,” “click through rate” and “organizational quotient” as it decides how to adjust the overall trust ranking that your page has built up.
SMS Services
You must also make sure that the basic services that you use on mobile phones are being put to use for your business as well. SMS is a great way to get in touch with consumers who do not check their mobile phones for the Internet. A large segment of the population still uses flip phones that does not accommodate Internet service as well. However, they can still receive text messages.
Your business SMS services should be in just as much use as your mobile ads and mobile apps, if not much more. Because people expect to receive text messages on cell phones, the correspondence is much less likely to be viewed as an interruption. If you can create the impression that the customer actually wants the messages that you are sending to him or her, your business SMS services can actually be looked at as an advantage or social communication.
There are a few ways to do this.
First of all, you should never use your bulk SMS gateway in order to message random people. If at all possible, the list of people that you send text messages to should be an opt in list. Opt in lists give your text messages the advantage of being asked for before they are given.
Another great technology that bulk SMS gateway packages have been able to implement recently is localization. This means that consumers will not receive text messages at random times; they will receive them when they are actually in proximity of your storefront or within a certain radius of a pre-specified location. This will bring your company to the top of their minds in a very timely manner.
Combining SMS Services, Ads and Apps on the Mobile Platform
Once you have your text message services securely in your corner when it comes to creating a basic communications package for your online customers, you can begin to incorporate ads and apps within your mobile marketing structure.
Using your opt in text messages as the base for your communications, you can direct your smart phone customers to any ads for apps that you may have created. By using a text message, you can do this in a way that seems natural and warranted. You will be able to time your text messages as well as localize them. This is something that you cannot do for ads and apps directly.
You can also use your ads and apps to expand your text message list. If you have a fun, interactive, multiplayer game as your app, you can require that a second player give up their SMS information in order to play their friend who has already opted in to your list. This is a more effective usage of the many types of communications that you can incorporate into a mobile marketing package. There are many other ways to use other aspects of mobile communications with ads and apps as well.
