“Mobile is the glue” that binds a person’s online life to their real-world activities, argued Tim Hayden, chief marketing officer and co-founder of 44Doors, at a recent BlogWorld and New Media Expo session. Your customers are on the go, and your marketing needs to reflect that reality.
But before a business can take advantage of the power of mobile, it needs to optimize its marketing efforts to reach customers on the move, Hayden said. Having an integrated mobile strategy allows customers to easily share brand experiences, lets companies tailor content and gives both sides a way to keep conversations alive following real-world interactions, he argued.
Here are some of ways Hayden suggested businesses work to integrate mobile into their marketing strategy:
- Know that simple is best. Everyone knows that social content and Web content are two different animals — and that distinction goes double for mobile content, he argued. Don’t just make that QR code link to your Web page or your Facebook page. Even if those pages are optimized for mobile, chances are the content isn’t. Mobile content needs to be easy to access, to appreciate and to share. If it fails the user on any one of those counts, it won’t create the reaction you’re hoping for, Hayden said.
- Think “glance and go.” Hayden explains that he’s bullish on QR codes because taking a picture of something is faster and more natural than looking up a Twitter handle, searching for a Web page or finding a venue to check into on a location-based social network. Other technologies may someday provide users with faster ways to make their mobile devices interact with their surroundings, but for now, QR codes are the fastest and most widely available connection tools.
- Let context dictate content. Make sure your mobile content is useful to consumers in the same location you expect them to experience it in, Hayden recommended. Don’t offer them videos in a location where they won’t be able to watch them right away, for example. On the flip side, you can use location as a way to tweak content to make it more applicable. If you’re offering customers recipes to go with their purchases at the grocery store, make them region specific so that your offerings match local tastes and ingredients, he suggested.
- Remember that it’s just the beginning. You aren’t going to get a user to buy something or fill out a complicated form via your mobile site, Hayden noted. Your mobile site is just one touch point in a (hopefully) long line of interactions you’ll be having with that user. A great mobile microsite gives a user a tasty piece of content and creates the opportunity for them to connect with a brand in a more substantial way through another channel at some later time. “Wow the hell out of them, then get them to take action,” he said.
How are you working to integrate mobile and social media marketing?
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