Mobilizing your marketing
With the rise of hand-held devices – and the dramatic fall of attention spans – it’s no secret that to reach your consumers, you need to be connected to them at all times. That’s why mobilizing your marketing campaigns is crucial. Below are a few tips to get you thinking about why “going mobile” important, and what you can do get started.
Keep it short
Think about what you do when you look at your cell phone. Are you leisurely, taking your time to read each word and go through every email? Or do you get the gist of what’s in front of you, respond quickly and move on to the next item? You work though things at a quick pace, only stopping to further investigate if it’s really important.
Grab their attention…
And you know why this is important: the scroll though. Touch-screen phones make it very easy to just glide past anything that we deem boring or unimportant. So when you’re doing Facebook updates or tweets, consider how it will appear on a smaller device.
Your 400-character explanation of the image you just posted may look short and sweet on your 17″ Probook, but on a Blackberry it’s a novel. Keep it brief but interesting; you want to get to the point without overdoing it. But you also don’t want to go at it half-heatedly. Remember, the goal in social media is two-pronged: grab their attention and hold it. And that’s where authenticity comes in.
Be honest
We can’t emphasize enough how important it is to be authentic. No other business out there is like yours. So show your personality, especially when putting together mobile marketing campaigns. The most important thing to walk away with here is to be yourself.
Make it your own
This all sounds good, but how can this really help your business? The answer is to make it your own. Maybe Facebook is your main channel (your 80%), but you still love to use Twitter to connect with new consumers. Once a month, make a campaign that is specifically designed for Twitter users on their cell phones.
Say you’re a bar looking to get more people in the door for your weekly beer tasting. Try a Twitter scavenger hunt; send out a series of charging people to find and Twitpic certain items with your bar’s name as the hashtag. Whoever finds the most items gets free admission for two to the tasting.
Whatever your desired platform, there are ways to make it more mobile-friendly for your targeted audience. Facebook, Twitter and other social sites aren’t just for laptops anymore; tablets, netbooks and the ever-evolving smart phones need to get an equal amount of love – if not more – in your marketing plans. So be sure to create campaigns that can easily translate to both stationary devices as well as hand-held ones.
Keith Glantz
