Mobile Marketing in 2024: What It Is and How to Do It

Would you be surprised to learn that almost 60% of web traffic comes from mobile? Probably not.

In today's digital age, mobile marketing has become an essential part of any successful marketing strategy.

With the majority of internet traffic coming from mobile devices, it's no wonder that businesses are focusing more on mobile marketing to reach their target audience.

However, with the constantly evolving technology and trends, navigating the world of mobile marketing can be challenging. From optimizing your website for mobile devices, to creating engaging mobile ads and utilizing social media, there are countless factors to consider.

Here we'll explore some of the latest trends and best practices in mobile marketing, so that you can stay ahead of the game and effectively reach your audience on their mobile devices. Whether you're a small business owner or a marketing professional, understanding the latest mobile marketing strategies is crucial to staying competitive in today's market.

So, let's dive in and explore the world of mobile marketing!

What Is Mobile Marketing?

Mobile marketing is a subset of marketing that focuses on reaching an audience on their mobile devices. Mobile marketing can come in many forms, including (but not limited to) mobile-friendly emails and social media content, SMS marketing, and search engine ad content directed toward mobile.

Why Is Mobile Marketing Important?

Mobile marketing is crucial for businesses of all sizes as it allows you to reach your target audience where they are—on their mobile devices. One study found that the average person spends 5.4 hours per day on their smartphone. And we already mentioned that mobile devices account for almost 60% of web traffic.

Compare this to the averages of some other common activities:

• 5.4 hours per day spent on a smartphone
• 2.5 hours per day watching TV
• 1.75–2 hours per day spent preparing, eating, and cleaning up after meals
• Less than 1 hour per day spent on cleaning and housework
• Less than 30 minutes per day spent on lawn and garden care
• Less than 30 minutes per day spent reading
• Less than 15 minutes per day spent on interior or exterior maintenance, repairs, or decoration

In other words, people are on their phones and other mobile devices. A lot.

And it’s not surprising. It corresponds to our own personal experiences. How often do you check your phone throughout the day? (I’d guess it’s pretty often!) Do you ever leave any text messages unread? (I’d guess you probably don’t!)

Mobile marketing not only allows you to reach people where they’re actually looking—it also allows businesses to target specific demographics. Some of these demographics include age, location, and interests.

Mobile marketing also allows you to take advantage of various channels such as social media, mobile apps, and SMS marketing. With mobile usage on the rise, businesses that don't have a solid mobile marketing strategy risk losing out on potential customers and revenue.

What Are Mobile Marketing Strategies and Best Practices?

As you can see, “mobile marketing” is a broad term encompassing a lot of different elements of marketing.

How can you apply such a broad concept to your business?

Here are some specific strategies and best practices to keep in mind.

Mobile SEO

SEO requires no definition, but for good measure, it stands for “Search Engine Optimization” and it involves setting up your website and its content with a view to ranking highly in search engines (primarily Google).

SEO in and of itself is a huge topic that could take up a whole lifetime of blog posts. (Indeed, there are SEO blogs devoted to just that.) But for the purposes of this post, the thing to keep in mind is that mobile SEO involves some unique considerations.

Here are some questions you can ask:

• Is your site content readable on mobile devices?
• Does everything on your site load quickly on mobile?
• Does everything look OK? No words cut off, graphical elements out of place?
• Does everything on your site work as expected? Do videos play correctly?
• Is everything easy to use on mobile?

Focus on implementing responsive design, mobile-friendly content, and page speed optimization. By making your site mobile-friendly, you can improve user experience and boost your visibility in search engine results.

In other words, in order to get the best SEO results, don’t forget to optimize for mobile.

One subset of this involves “voice search optimization.” This involves optimizing your content to take into account the amount of people who will make searches by verbally asking questions to their “electronic assistants” (like Siri or Alexa).

Hubspot provides some tips on how to make the most out of voice search optimization (VSO). They point out that voice searches are a bit different from regular searches someone may type into Google, and they offer some tips on how to go about VSO.

Some of their tips include:

• Targeting keywords that are question-based—most of the time when people are searching via voice, their trying to find the answer to a question
• Having a casual tone—voice searches are more casual
• Go after featured snippets in Google—virtual assistants often read off the featured snippet (if one exists) for a search inquiry

In-App Marketing

If it makes sense for your business structure and if you have the manpower or capacity, you should consider creating an app.

Mobile apps can be a powerful marketing tool, allowing businesses to engage with their audience in a more personalized way.

When you have a mobile app, it opens up the door to a whole new world of marketing options.

Push Notifications

Push notifications are one way to get your messages in front of your customers without needing to know their phone number. You can develop strategic push notification campaigns that raise awareness and boost sales.

In-App Messaging

Even without push notifications, you can still use in-app messaging to communicate with your customers and prospects. For example, you can have a “notifications” section or a news feed within your app. Many people can’t resist reading their notifications (there’s just something unsatisfying about seeing that there’s unread notifications!). So you can use notifications to get more people to see the message you’re trying to convey.

Loyalty Programs

Yet another powerful way to use mobile apps for marketing is through loyalty programs. In fact, you can run your entire loyalty program through your mobile app, and you can even use that as an incentive to get people to download your app. The app can keep track of their purchases and give them rewards for purchasing more, thus encouraging and incentivizing them to keep returning.

Whether it's through push notifications, in-app messaging, or loyalty programs, mobile apps give you a direct line of communication with your customers. By creating a mobile app that caters to your target audience's interests and needs, you can increase engagement and loyalty.

SMS Marketing

Texting is widely used as a marketing tool… yet is little talked about.

98% of text messages are read. No other marketing channel can even come close to that, whether mobile or not.

Since it has such an effective read rate, companies can use texting to let customers and prospects know about sales, discounts, updates, and announcements. And when you send out these kinds of notices, you can be pretty confident that your recipient will actually read it.

To engage in SMS marketing, it’s best to find an SMS-specific marketing platform like Mobile Text Alerts. These platforms will be similar to email service providers in that they’ll allow you to manage a database of contacts and organize that contact list.

You’ll be able to offer your prospects several different easy ways to opt in to receive your texts (such as text-to-join and automated QR codes). You’ll also be able to integrate with your CRM or other services using API or integration sites—that way you can automate processes according to what works best for you in your specific situation.

(You can get a free demo to see how the Mobile Text Alerts platform would work for you.)

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Mobile-Focused Ads

Ad platforms like Google Ads and social media ads allow you to initiate mobile-specific ad campaigns and target those campaigns to people on mobile devices.

Having mobile-specific campaigns allows you to make informed decisions about elements of your ads and corresponding landing pages including:

• How much copy you use (more copy can look more intimidating on mobile)
• The size of images you showcase (images that look great on web may be way too big or small on mobile)—here’s a guide that talks a little about how to optimize images for mobile
• How the ads and landing pages are formatted (a page that looks beautiful on web may look clunky and awkward on mobile)

In essence, you just want to make sure that you create campaigns with an awareness of mobile in view, whether you create campaigns that only apply to mobile or are just implementing your general marketing strategy.

Mobile Content Marketing

Content marketing involves creating content that’s valuable for your prospective customers, rather than directly advertising and selling to them.

Creating mobile-friendly content is essential for engaging mobile users.

When optimizing your content for mobile devices, consider the smaller screen sizes and user behavior patterns. It’s usually best if content is easily scannable, with clear headings and bullet points. Concise and engaging language is often the best way to engage your audience effectively.

Visual content, such as images and videos, also helps capture people’s attention quickly and allows visually-oriented visitors to more easily consume the content. So incorporate visually appealing elements to enhance the impact of your mobile content.

But make sure that your visual content works well on mobile devices. For example, make sure embedded videos and images are the right size. It’s too easy to forget to check the mobile version of your site and content when you’re making updates and changes.

AI

AI is all the rage, and it isn’t going away.

Odds are you already use AI in your overall marketing strategy, and it can be incredibly helpful for mobile marketing as well.

Tools like ChatGPT and Jasper can help you plan copy and creative elements, write headlines, come up with outlines, and iterate on content. These tools aren’t quite to the point where you can just accept the output that they give, but they can be huge time-savers in helping you to plan content and come up with first drafts.

You can ask the AI tools prompts such as:

• What would be a good mobile-friendly image to go along with an email about XYZ?
• Can you give me some ideas for a short headline about XYZ in a casual style?
• What would be a good outline for a blog post targeting the keyword XYZ?

You can take the helpful content from the output and incorporate it into your mobile marketing campaign. You’ll need to edit it, and you may need to make specific edits with mobile optimization in mind.

What I’ve found is that AI tools do better when you give it smaller chunks of tasks rather than asking it to do everything at once. So instead of telling your AI tool to “write a blog post,” tell it to write a specific section. Rather than telling it to write a whole email, tell it to write some ideas for a headline.

AI won’t replace humans in marketing, but it can help you brainstorm and iterate ideas.

Consider Mobile in Your Email Marketing

Has the following ever happened to you?

You design and craft what you think is a great marketing email with good copy and beautiful graphics. You think it’s good to send off.

Then you realize… I forgot to check the mobile version.

When you do check it, you realize that the graphics are off, the spacing isn’t quite right—and you need to make a few modifications.

I’ve been there. And that anecdote is a reminder to make sure you consider mobile when you’re putting together your email marketing.

In fact, in many contexts in our current climate, you should probably be creating your email content with mobile in mind first.

Consider that subject lines and preview text may get cut off at earlier points than on desktop. Consider that blocks of text may look more overwhelming on a mobile view. Consider that the size, spacing, and layout of your graphics will be different.

Make your emails as optimized for mobile as you can.

Tracking and Analyzing Mobile Marketing Performance

Without analytics, you’re just playing a guessing game. (And let’s be honest, even with analytics marketing can sometimes feel like a guessing game!)

As with any marketing effort, you need to track and analyze your mobile marketing performance.

So whatever method you use to go about mobile marketing, make sure you have key reporting tools in place so that you can measure and compare results. Some important performance indicators include mobile traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, and time spent on site.

Use analytics tools and platforms to monitor these metrics, gaining a deeper understanding of user behavior and optimizing your mobile marketing strategy accordingly.

Run A/B tests and see which strategies work the best for you and your audience.

Other Strategies

Apple and Google Play Store Marketing

Another option if you have a mobile app is to advertise in the Apple Store and Google Play Store, to help drive more traffic to your app.

These app marketplaces provide a massive user base and offer unique opportunities to reach potential customers directly on their mobile devices.

First off, you’ll want to make sure your app is “App Store Optimized” so that you can get as many people as possible to click on your app in the app store, and so they can have as good of an experience as possible when they view your app.

You can then use Apple and Google’s promotional ad tools to run ads that will help your app get more exposure.

3rd-Party App Ads

Another way to get more exposure in the app stores is to purchase ad space in other companies’ popular apps to help draw more traffic to your app or site. You can find apps that might be popular among your target audience and try to get ad space within those apps.

Location-Based Marketing

Location-based marketing allows you to target customers based on their geographic location, making it a great way to reach a local audience. Whether it's through geofencing, where users receive push notifications when they enter a certain location, or location-based offers and promotions, businesses can use location-based marketing to increase foot traffic and drive sales.

What Do I Need to Do Next?

Lists like the strategies mentioned above can be overwhelming.

There’s so much you could be doing. How can you possibly get started? Are there specific “next steps” you can move forward with?

You betcha!

Step 1: Choose 1–3 Mobile Marketing Strategies to Focus On

You can’t do everything. You just can’t.

So just focus on a couple of things at a time and build out from there.

Look through the list above and select 1–3 strategies that resonate the most with you. Then do what you need to do to start implementing those.

Step 2: Monitor Performance

As you’re implementing your new mobile marketing strategies, make sure to monitor performance and see which strategies are more successful.

After a period of time, you’ll be able to determine whether a particular strategy is worth continuing.

(If there are some strategies you determine not to be worth it, don’t give up on them completely. You could try implementing them again at a later time—it just may not have been a good time for you and your audience.)

Step 3: Choose 1–3 More Strategies

Once you’ve incorporated your initial 1–3 strategies into your overall marketing, you can select another 1–3 more.

Eventually you’ll have implemented the entire list and will have a fully robust mobile marketing strategy.

Invest in Mobile Marketing for the Health of Your Business

When it’s all said and done, you need to continue investing in mobile marketing to help your business grow and succeed.

Mobile marketing is slowly overtaking other forms of marketing in terms of importance, because of the huge prominence of mobile device usage.

Make sure you keep up with the times and have a solid mobile marketing plan in place.

Try out our SMS marketing platform for free today!