From Universal Web Design Experts
A recent report identified that around 700 million Facebook users accessed the site via a mobile device. This means that about 70% of Facebook users use modern technologies to access the site.
Facebook is continuously changing and developing their site to keep up with consumer demand. Through their latest study, they now know that mobile accessibility is essential their business. Facebook will do whatever it takes to provide the best mobile experience it possibly can.
Using this data, it’s fair to assume that around 70% of internet users access the web via a non standard device such as a laptop or computer. With this consideration we all need to develop our websites and marketing materials to meet user demand.
Below I share 5 tips on how to develop your online marketing to meet the requirements of a mobile user.
Sponsored Stories
Facebook on the whole offers great marketing opportunities. One of which is its sponsored stories option. Facebook enables advertising managers to place adverts accordingly within the site. The adverts are viewable on desktops, laptops and all other portable devices.
Since Facebook’s update, you are now able to set your adverts to only display on mobile devices. This way you can promote your news as a sponsored story, which will show up within users news feeds.
I advise all advertisers to measure the effectiveness of Facebook advertising through A/B testing. This way you can compare whether ‘mobile only’ or ‘desktop only’ adverts work best.
Mobile Friendly Email
To ensure that any campaign is promoted to full effect it’s paramount that you incorporate email marketing.
If we know that around 70% of Facebook users access the web via their mobile devices, it could be assumed that around 70% of Email users also access their messages via their mobile devices, with this in mind it’s now vital that all email communications are easily accessible via a mobile device.
Popular email marketing systems such as Mail Chimp enable you to preview your emails, this enables you to review your message before it’s even sent. This makes it easy for you to adapt your designs accordingly to the latest requirements.
Use effective subject titles, this is the most influential opening factor.
Consider Mobile Users Within All Marketing Efforts
Ensure that customers receive a consistent online experience with your business. Consistent branding and easy to access marketing material (this includes adapting your web design) ensures that customers associate a positive experience with your business.
Be creative with your traditional marketing as well. Not only are you able to send users from adverts directly through the use of QR codes and unique URLs, but this is also an effective technique to track your marketing success.
You could also consider using check-ins. This is where users publicly share their location / the business they are visiting. This strategy works great in restaurants. You could ask customers to promote your business to hundreds of their friends in return for a small discount.
SMS Messaging
Mobile providers are cashing in on the effectiveness of SMS marketing. Big brands are paying in relative terms, a very small fee to contact a large network of consumers. (In liegeman’s terms an SMS message is a text message).
More businesses should test SMS messaging. The key is to keep your messages short and sweet, with an attractive proposition and one call to action, this way people will be more receptive to what you say. Please ensure not to text people too often. Consumers don’t like businesses invading their privacy and SMS marketing is borderline.
Testing
My best advice is to always test everything once. Until you try all marketing methods you won’t know what works best for your business.
I advise to measure all of your marketing activity using tools such as Google Analytics. It’s quite astonishing how effective GA is at measuring your online and offline-marketing activities.
Summary
I hope that this article makes you consider the user experience, implementation and testing of all your marketing efforts.