Richard Vanderhurst_How To Treat Customers Right Using Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing has been proven to be a great way to reach out to a much larger audience. Today, most people have a mobile device, which may include a smart phone, tablet or similar gear.

Create your own app. Customers looking for specials, sales and promotions will check your mobile application regularly. Along with increasing your brand recognition, it can also increase sales. The price of an app can vary considerably so consult a professional regarding the development process.

Use your normal website to drive traffic to your mobile website. Use your website to advertise your mobile sites and smartphone apps. That way, customers who enjoy your main site will be able to join up with your mobile site as well.

Do some research on your target market. It’s important to know what your target audience needs and wants before you waste any money on mobile marketing. Are they more likely to use a mobile phone than a computer? What operating systems do their phones use? Determine your target audience, and then solidify how you are going to reach out to them.

Whenever you are promoting an event, make sure to use multiple marketing mediums. For instance, you can start by sending out flyers to your customers to let them know about a discount in advance. Follow up with an email and an MMS reminder before the beginning of the sale.

Mobile-device friendly maps can be used on your website to entice local customers. Customers searching for a real location will be able to quickly and easily access your store information and address.

Know your targeted audience! Use research findings based on their age, sex and even race if applicable to understand them better. This will increase the likelihood that your recipients will actually read your message.

In your mobile marketing campaigns, make your emails mobile friendly to ensure success and effectiveness in reaching your customers. This can be accomplished through clickable phone numbers, pages with navigation tabs, and other features that make your site easy to navigate on a mobile phone or device. Phones are an increasingly popular way to read email, so you need to remember this when you compose them.

Do not assume that everyone will understand what abbreviations mean. If a person can’t understand your ad, you might lose a customer.

You can encourage customer participation and enhance your brand recognition with QR codes. You can use these codes to pass on various discounts to your customers. Anyone with a smart phone can capture and use them. Get the most important information to your customers in a fast and effortless manner using QR codes.

Do not forget to invest some cash into making sure that your site is mobile-ready. Creating a mobile site that appeals to potential customers can be difficult. If the job seems like beyond your scope, consider outsourcing it to professionals.

You should link your website to your social media site to get more exposure. Social networking sites that are presented through your business’ official website will save your customers the hassle of searching for you on those sites.

Take the time to conduct a usability test. If your customers can not see what you are forwarding to them, your efforts will be wasted. Ask people you know who own different mobile devices to let you send out some test messages and see how they look.

Make it simple for your customers to forward your mobile marketing ads to their friends. Make an incentive part of your mobile marketing campaign. Offer some sort of reward to your customers for forwarding the message to a friend, and you will instantly double the efforts of your campaign.

Sending offers too often is annoying and will turn customers off. Reports have shown that the most success is seen when offers are sent once or so a week or just a few times a month. Your customer should feel as if they will miss out if they don’t accept the offer immediately. Don’t offer too many discounts or coupons. Your customers will feel they can wait to make a purchase instead of shopping now.

You always have the option of sharing apps with your customers, but were you aware that you can create the majority of these applications yourself? If your business designs it’s own app, you can step up your mobile marketing campaign and compete with the big boys. Research all the features that are available to you.

Don’t add SMS to a mobile marketing campaign unless you are willing to be totally honest with your customers about how many texts will be sent. Don’t ever send texts to anyone unless they have specifically opted-in for that service. It is very easy to screw up an SMS strategy because of how it notifies consumers. It can seem like you are being pushy. Make your customers aware that they can opt-in to receive your SMS and be responsible for the maximum number of messages you will transmit each month. If you go over your stated limit, customers may feel you are dishonest.

You are going to use your plan across a multitude of different platforms, so be sure that you can maintain consistency. Your message must display properly on all three major smart-phone marketplaces: Android, Blackberry and iPhone. Remember that it is easier to simplify the messages you send than to custom-fit messages to different platforms. Mobile marketing is no exception to the “simpler is better” principle.

Start mobile marketing campaigns with clear, definite goals. Get some feedback from your customers to find out how you can reach out to them. Do you want to retain a loyal group of customers, or are you looking to expand and reach a new audience?

You will be able to grow your business as mobile device ownership keeps rising. It will not be long before everyone will have a mobile phone, and mobile marketing is going to prove to be a very productive way to reach people. If you use these suggestions, you will edge out the rivals and communicate to your customers. Go for it!