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We tracked down four mobile marketing minds to share business advice on how to determine best practices for being on the fingertips of consumers using mobile devices. Here's a video and overview of the mobile marketing insights they shared with us:
Tim Hayden has spent most of his career in and around mobile technologies. Hayden calls it the “mobile moment” when a mobile user, who usually is interacting with social networks on a mobile device, clicks on a link. At this moment, your website needs to be mobile friendly, or you lose the moment and perhaps a customer. If your website looks great on a 15 inch laptop, but doesn’t have what developers call responsive design, or is not specifically designed for mobile devices, that website is going to frustrate the user looking at it on a four-inch screen.
Author Jay Baer believes in making your content so useful to the user that they might even pay for it. His latest book, Youtility, is a New York Times best seller. An example is his work with Columbia Sportswear to create a mobile application that fits a circumstance and lifestyle of many who would wear Columbia’s line of outdoor apparel. The application is called What Knot to Do (in the Greater Outdoors). The clever play on words underscores the app’s function, which shows dozens of knots and how to tie them. This is very useful information for campers, hikers, boaters and plenty of others who spend time outdoors.
Content marketing is a component of Lee Odden’s strategy of optimizing and integrating your content. In Odden’s book, Optimize, he focuses on the integration of search engine optimization, content marketing and social media. The first steps for optimizing according to Odden is digging into the details of Web and consumer data. His firm, Top Rank Marketing, will assess whether a company’s traffic is significant enough to warrant mobile design, content that is most appropriate for the mobile setting and mobile advertising. These opportunities are evident after you spend time with Web analytics and consumer behavior data, according to Odden.
Mobile marketing comes down to content; its format, usefulness to the user, applicability in the mobile setting and how it interacts with other digital distribution channels for a company. Nick Westergaard, CEO of Brand Driven Digital, believes mobile usage is not a final state or even a phase, but a part of consumers’ lives that continues to evolve. The more they use information on mobile devices, the more they want. Westergaard’s firm is producing content marketing boot camps taking place across Iowa in 2014 that will include ways to develop content for mobile audiences.
So, what are the keys to mobile marketing?
1) Regularly monitor Web traffic to see increases in the number of visitors from mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets.
2) Continue to see the bigger story and the information your audience will find useful on mobile devices.
3) Design websites to be mobile friendly with responsive design as users click through social networks to land on your website.
Thanks to Tim, Jay, Lee and Nick for sharing their mobile marketing wisdom with us!
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