If you’re reading this, you already know that mobile marketing is here to stay. Like social marketing before, and search before even that, advertisers are scratching their heads to figure out what works.
Marketers who embrace new channels first have a clear advantage over their competition. You may be confused by all the options out there and hesitant to invest for fear of wasted budgets. The sad truth is a lot of brands are wasting money on mobile marketing by not tracking performance—or their ROI.
Read on for three key mobile marketing strategies you can use to create accountability in your brand’s mobile activity.
Strategy #1: Mobilize your website
The first and most important step is to mobilize your website, lead forms, and all other digital marketing material. Many marketers wrongly conclude that simply formatting their sites for mobile is enough. However there are additional steps you can take to turbo-charge your customer’s mobile experience and get more of your visitors to take action.
First, remove any extraneous images, pop-ups or other bloated code from your mobile site. Remember that mobile users have network speeds much slower than Web. The old adage of “Keep it simple, stupid” is the best policy in mobile when it comes to site design and optimization. If you’re gathering data, make sure your mobile forms are easy to fill out on all mobile devices by creating large fields that trigger keyboard function when clicked. Remove all extraneous fields that may be a nuisance to a mobile user, including: confirm email, captchas, full address, etc. If it’s relevant to your site, take advantage of the user’s location to offer handy information. Create a click-to-call button to make it simple for prospects to call you immediately upon reaching your mobile site.
Strategy #2: Create a mobile affiliate program
The second step to start driving more traffic to your now mobilized site is to create a mobile affiliate program. Mobile is complicated and there are many vendors out there. It’s very easy to spend a lot of money on mobile and see little return if you’re buying media yourself. By creating an affiliate program you can instead pay per action. You simply decide which action is important to you: sign-ups, registrations, installs, etc., and offer a bounty for actions generated. Once your tracking and affiliate program is set up you can begin recruiting affiliate partners whose job is to acquire mobile inventory and drive actions. Buying on a CPA (cost-per-action) is a much more effective pricing structure than buying on an impression or click-basis since you’re only paying for results.
Strategy #3: Utilize pay-per-call
Pay-per-call can be a big opportunity for advertisers that have a call center. Setting up a pay-per-call program can be as simple as providing a unique number to your marketing partners to track inbound calls to your center. Search has moved to mobile and it remains a powerful online marketing channel. Mobile search should be a top priority for advertisers in pay-per-call. Google’s new Enhanced Search feature clearly indicates that mobile is a growing force in determining consumer trends. Google removed previously available granular mobile targeting in favor of a more simplified system. Like “Quality Score” before it, this is a move on Google’s part to get cost-per-click prices to rise in mobile search. Take this opportunity to establish your mobile search presence today and utilize search with pay-per-call to drive inbound leads. If you don’t currently have an SEM department, you can also get distribution to pay-per-call by using the affiliate model outlined above.
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Mobile is rapidly evolving. Advertisers that jump in feet first can take advantage of this growing channel. Many marketers, though, get mobile wrong by taking their existing strategies and simply asking for mobile inventory.
Mobilizing your site to create a quick and easy mobile experience for your visitors is the first step toward success in mobile marketing. Now that you’re ready for mobile traffic, create an affiliate program to acquire actions using performance marketing. And for those brands that have a call center, utilizing pay-per-call will allow you to take full advantage of mobile.
Alex Tsatkin is VP of mobile at MediaWhiz, and founder of MobAff, MediaWhiz’s mobile marketing platform. MediaWhiz is a Matomy Media Group company.
