“I am not sure whether my customers will be looking for me on their mobile devices”, “Creating a mobile strategy is not a part of my plans, nor do I have the resources for it.” If you are the marketing manager of a brand, and you’ve been one of those to have uttered these lines while envisioning your marketing strategy for the next financial year; trust me, dear friend, you’ve got that wrong!
Your brand NEEDS to be on mobile.
Why? Let’s consider the following stats:
- Close to a billion smartphones are forecasted to sell in 2013 – Yes, you read that right. A billion smartphones. Imagine the potential reach you could have across the world, with that kind of audience base.
- 4 out of 5 consumers use smartphones to shop – So, if you are an e-commerce website looking to achieve that stretched online sales target this quarter, make sure you have a mobile application / mobile optimized website.
- Tablets will outsell laptops and PCs in 2013 – Again, applications on tablets are slowly but surely on their way to becoming a necessity for marketers. So might as well be an early adopter and reap its benefits!
- Mobile search queries have grown 5 fold in the last two years – It is important that your mobile website is optimized for search queries coming from mobile. Mobile SEO thus becomes an important weapon in the arsenal of your brand’s digital marketing strategy.
- Only 25% of brands have a mobile strategy – There are two ways you could look at this. Glass half full or glass half empty! You could decide not to focus on mobile because others aren’t; or you could make the most of the avalanche of people who are going to be in the mobile and tablet space where competitors have low adoption. It is actually a perfect chance to establish yourself; way before your competitors do!
But be aware, it’s not enough to just have a presence in the mobile space.
“The Apple app store and Google Play have a total of 700k apps, but 2/3rd of the apps on each have never been downloaded!”
See the irony?
So if you are venturing into the mobile marketing space, you’ve got to do your research, develop a well-thought out strategy, create an app that truly makes life easier for your target audience, and take the time and effort to promote the application to a relevant audience. Keep in mind and optimize factors like download rate, install base, ratings and comments, social mentions, etc. that will determine how your mobile app will rank on the app stores.
If the effort seems too overwhelming and you have absolutely no clue how to go about it, hiring a digital marketing company which provides mobile marketing services could be the right way forward.
If you are a brand who hasn’t ventured into the mobile space yet, now is the time for you to take the leap! Reach out in the comments for any thoughts, queries, experiences, or questions!